Tsafi Timor

This memoir, written in the wake of my mother’s passing and the profound bond we shared, unexpectedly reached thousands of readers who found themselves reflected in its themes. Many wrote to tell me that the book felt as if it had been written “exactly about them,” even when their childhood took place in entirely different places. Though rooted in the intimate story of our family and the intertwined life of twin sisters, the book resonated far beyond its origins. Readers connected show more deeply with its exploration of memory, home, identity, and the quiet emotional footprints we all carry. What began as a personal journey became a universal one, echoing shared experiences of love, loss, and the ties that shape us. show less

Oh wow, this book is a lot. You might think I brought it upon myself by requesting a review copy of something about such a contentious topic, and you’d have a very good point. I was dearly hoping that the author could eloquently weave a story around this current chapter of the ongoing violence in the eastern Mediterranean in a thoughtful and most importantly balanced manner. How wrong I was.

October 7 is less a novel, more a selection of individual propaganda stories clumsily woven show more together in a confusing manner. Its characters are embarrassingly one-dimensional on both sides; every single one of the Israelis is without exception kind, strong, brave, resilient, compassionate, pious and so on. Not one of them has any faults at all, apart from being too considerate to Palestinians. I take that back, musician Gil is called “sensitive” so often I suspect the author didn’t have the courage to say ‘gay’. The Palestinians are also insultingly simplistic, they’re repeatedly described as “monsters” and “evil”, start every conversation with a shout of “Allahu Akbar!”, and are described as violent, cruel and even smelly without rest or logic. When we meet the one Palestinian family in Gaza that aren’t, they don’t get names, don’t speak and are puppets of Hamas. Their home later gets invaded by the IDF and they get drugged, which is supposed to be compassionate I guess.

Then there is the backdrop of the events of October 7th 2023 itself. I suspected that the narrative pushed here would be the one officially approved by the Israeli government and I was not at all wrong. The debunked stories of mass rapes and beheaded babies by Hamas fighters are repeated here verbatim and without specifics as per usual. I could add thousands of words to this review refuting the vast majority of the claims made about that day by Netanyahu and his government, and I could equally detail the huge numbers of atrocities committed by the IDF starting on October 8th and during the past two years, but I won’t because all this info is readily available with an internet search. I will mention that the United Nations and numerous other official organisations have formally declared that numerous actions by the IDF are war crimes, and the famine in Gaza caused by the IDF blockade is a genocide. These are unequivocal truths, and this info is completely ignored by this book.

What really sticks in my throat is the continual push to present the Israeli narrative at all costs. For example the book’s repeated claims that the IDF try to minimise casualties, when official Israeli figures state that 83% of the Palestinians killed by them since October 8th were civilians (a figure much higher than virtually every other modern conflict). There’s never any ambiguity in the narrative at all - the Israelis are the goodies and the Palestinians are the baddies. At times the military protagonists give lip service to compassion about the terrible acts of destruction they’re committing, but not once do they consider stopping perpetrating their violence on Gaza. A pilot has these thoughts as he’s literally dropping bombs directly where hostages are being held (which results in the deaths of numerous hostages) and yet the myth of compassionate precision bombing is parroted.

Apart from all else, this book is monumentally badly written. The first page of the novel itself attempts to introduce us to no less than seventeen characters, and that’s even with the chapter title taking up the first third of the page. I genuinely had to draw a family tree to have the faintest idea of who was who. That comes directly after an introduction and prologue which both try to bias the reader’s views against the Palestinians before the narrative even begins. The narrative in the following chapters is so badly fractured each chapter seemingly starts and ends at arbitrary points along a wildly oscillating timeline. We skip between between protagonists’ viewpoints as if trapped in a badly-edited kids TV show, jumping to the next atrocity committed by the faceless evil captors, briefly pausing to ruminate on the experiences of an elderly holocaust survivor before using sexual assault as a blunt weapon of sympathy. Add all that to the multiple character confusions and it’s a thoroughly disorientating experience.

The book does pay lip service to providing a counter perspective however, pointing out Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to prioritise recovering Israeli hostages in a couple of places. But nowhere is mentioned (let alone condemned) the intentions to completely colonise Gaza or kill all Palestinians trumpeted by ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich in the media. Even in the epilogue the numbers of Palestinian people who have lost their lives since Oct 7th are not even mentioned (Israeli figures in May 2025 say at least 53,000; other sources say many times greater) which seems to be the minimum if a supposedly peaceful position is being proposed. I suspect it’s another example of Palestinians not shown to be worthy of our compassion, hence their deaths don’t matter.

So in conclusion this book is a mess. There are so many inaccuracies and untruths littered throughout its pages that calling it fiction is almost an understatement. It is deeply deeply bigoted and prejudiced towards Palestinians, and I would suggest it’s one of the most blatantly transparent examples of propaganda I have ever seen, though I would not count myself an expert in that. Obviously it has been written from a place of great shock and pain at the events of October 7th (which is understandable as the events of that date are terrible and I condemn them), and I agree with the author that the suffering of the hostages has been neglected by those in power in Israel. However there is no understanding whatsoever of the plight of the people of Gaza or Palestine who have existed under an oppressive invading regime for over 70 years, nor that the people of Gaza have been under siege since the early 1990s.

I’ll end with one section of text that comes tantalisingly close to self-realisation: “”You know”, his friend said… “I wonder what God wanted to tell us on October 7… Did we go wrong somewhere?”” If only the Israeli government and the author had asked themselves that question a long time ago. show less

Based off some accounts of October 7, 2023, the first large-scale invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, these short stories offer a perspective on the continued genocide in Palestine and Israel.

There is no need for blame or retaliation when more people continue to die, especially after September 2025 UNGA resolution for a two party state.

All loss of life is horrific, including those who spoke about the losses incurred in this book. I just hope one day we can stop show more reading about all the death and start reading about those who are trying to advocate for peace in a region where so few people even know what that means anymore.

I’m not a middle east scholar, or a Jew or Arab — I’m just frankly tired of war. There are ways forward to reconcile with brothers, families, those who you wish were dead. I saw it first hand in Ireland at the turn of the millennium. There is peace to be had here: we just have to stop the war. show less

This book emerged from a deeply personal maternal journey—one filled with doubt, pain, and the quiet, difficult questions that every mother confronts. Through Tali’s story, I explore the profound internal shifts that take place when a woman faces challenges that are anything but simple. Her journey transforms uncertainty into resilience, hesitation into strength, and fear into growth. As both a writer and a psychologist specializing in parenting, I revisited motherhood through Tali’s show more evolving emotional landscape, watching her redefine herself in the face of adversity. Walking a Tightrope turns her struggle into a story of courage, transformation, and the inner victories that shape a mother's life show less