“October 07. The deadliest day in Israeli history told by the victims and their loved ones”, by Lee Yaron, afterword by Joshua Cohen, translated from Hebrew by Colin Reingewirtz and Laurent Trèves, Grasset, 368 p., €23 , digital €16.
At dawn on October 7, 2023, Raz, 24, is with friends at the Tribe of Nova festival, where thousands of ravers from Israel, but also from Europe and the American continent have gathered. Suddenly sirens sound, signaling a rocket attack. When his mother calls the young man to warn him that an attack is also in progress, Raz tells him that she is crazy. But, hidden under the festival stage, he soon sees armed men methodically shooting down the dancers who try to flee. ” A shot. A shout. A fall. A burst of laughter. » A little later, he witnesses the rape of a woman by five men in civilian clothes, who end up stabbing her to death. Ten hours have passed when the miraculous can finally come out of his hiding place. When the policeman asks him if he needs anything, Raz responds: “Just a glass of water.” And a piece of paper and a pen, if possible. »
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Note so as not to forget, this is an emergency that comes from afar. As the American historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932-2009) showed in a classic book, Zakhor. Jewish history and Jewish memory (La Découverte, 1984), this memorial imperative structures the biblical tradition. “Remember what Amalek did to you”, “Remember the days of old, pass the years from generation to generation”, “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt”, hammers home the text, until the injunction of remembrance coincides with the hope of survival. Over the centuries, the “books of remembrance” that the survivors of this or that pogrom wrote so that the archive would preserve the future.
It is in this line that falls October 7a work which appears today and of which “Le Monde des livres” publishes large extracts. Its author, Lee Yaron, is a journalist at Haaretz, an Israeli daily classified on the left and the bête noire of the Netanyahu government. Aged 30, she became known for her investigations into cases of political corruption and the climate crisis, but also on issues of discrimination. His numerous articles devoted to the violence suffered by women, LGBTQ+ people and asylum seekers have allowed him to describe all the faces of Israeli society: Jews, Arabs, Bedouins, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Chinese, etc.
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