Testimony of Amir Tibon: Rescued by his father as Hamas terrorists stood outside his house

Video Testimony of Nahal Oz Survivor

As soon as the heaviest fog began to clear, early on Saturday, October 7, and I began to grasp the enormity of the unfolding horror in Israel, my thoughts turned immediately to my friend, Amir Tibon.

A journalist, Amir and his wife Miri left their hip, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv life in 2014 and moved to Kibbutz Nahal Oz. It was a carefully considered commitment they made to help build and grow the clusters of frontier settlements along the border with the Gaza Strip.

The younger of their daughters, now three and eighteen months, was born there. They know no other life. Real kibbutznik kids.

Until October 7. When everything changed.

Amir huddled, helplessly, with his wife and daughters, in the safe room of their beautiful, recently built house. They had no food. No electricity or air. No light. They sat in total darkness for hours. Shouts of terrorists in Arabic were unceasing. And just outside their home. Machine guns were shooting constantly. Sheer terror and terrified sounds.

Amir and Miri’s young children were silent. They sensed the danger, he said. Of course, such images take us immediately to the Holocaust. Every crevice, closet, garden, shed, was being searched for Jews. Families huddled together in safe rooms and were burned to death, sealed in a charred embrace. Shot in closets. A baby baked to death in an oven.

The sadism, planned and enjoyed, was filmed by the terrorists and livestreamed. Their trophies. It is all so savage. I have no vocabulary for this carnage. The depth of cruelty and jubilation expressed as they inflicted such horrors; I have no idea how to process that.

Not yet.

Amir and his family sat. Trapped. Engulfed in sheer terror. Hearing this inferno unfurl around them. Until they were rescued, miraculously, by his father, Noam Tibon, a retired Brigadier General in the IDF.

I spoke with Amir on Tuesday night from his temporary home on another kibbutz which is hosting displaced families. He is a different man than he was. Still charming, articulate, intelligent. But there was a grey film over his face. His pallor. His eyes. Amir will never be what he was on October 6, again. None of us will.

Please listen to his incredible story; one of the few truly uplifting moments of that darkest of days. His father, Noam, is a national hero. Amir says that the real heroes of the day are his little girls.

This video testimony with Amir Tibon is incredible. I know he’s been on mainstream media but nowhere has the extraordinary story of the survival and rescue of his family – as well as their rage at having been sacrificed by the government and army – been told as he does here.

Amir speaks of his family’s motivation to live at Nahal Oz and how special it is; the government’s persistent lies regarding their security, particularly after completion of the “wall” that was to end all infiltration from Gaza. Which was clearly not true. And he tells us of the remarkable love and courage of his parents, Gali and Noam Tibon, who drove from their home in Tel Aviv to rescue their family, and on the way saved many more.

The Tibon family was very lucky. Very. The army was nowhere. Noam Tibon, a retired Brigadier General in his 60s, took matters into his own hands. And thank goodness he did.

It is difficult – but very important for us to hear these testimonies. Perhaps not surprisingly, they are already being denied. Yes. People are saying that the Jews made it up. We cannot submit to such historical revisionism driven by the most intense hatred.

The video we have posted is 38 minutes long and you will hear in-depth commentary from a seasoned, professional journalist, Amir Tibon, about why he chose to live there, his terror and rescue on October 7 and the rage he and so many Israelis feel towards the government. The one thing Israelis rely on all governments for is honesty regarding security threats. Without security we are nothing.

Finally, this video was edited from a longer session with other speakers on different topics. We will post a shorter video with relevant and interesting discussion from that same session in the coming days.

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Thanks for reading, watching and listening.

Let’s hope for better times.