Resilience in action: ToI’s reporters share stories from 2024’s wartime ‘new normal’
Our writers recall their most memorable articles from a year still dominated by the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, but in which brighter times can be seen – however faintly – on the horizon

The horrific effects of the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion have continued to make themselves felt over the course of the past year as Israel grapples with a multifront war, fragile ceasefire efforts and the ongoing plight of 100 hostages held in Gaza.
The assassinations of Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, along with the significant weakening of their respective terror organizations and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, hint at a new order in the Middle East, possibly one with a reduced Iranian influence.
At the same time, an internal struggle over Israel’s democratic character continues to split society, even as the Startup Nation’s top innovators are still doing what they do best — despite many finding themselves in IDF reservist uniforms more than office attire — and stories of creativity, caring, and conscientiousness haven’t ebbed a bit.
When we asked our reporters to share their most important stories of 2024, we found that while many of the selections did indeed touch on the war in some way, they often did so by way of art, film, sports, technology, and entrepreneurship. Other stories focused on Jewish life around the world, most especially on battlefield university campuses, reflecting the tightening relations between Israel and the Diaspora — a byproduct of a global rise in antisemitism that has reminded us that the fates of all Jews are intertwined.
We hope that these stories move you as much as they have us, and that this coming year brings better news.
—
Under a Lebanese border village, IDF finds huge Hezbollah base primed for invasion
Emanuel Fabian, military correspondent

Before the war, the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon had explicitly said it had plans to infiltrate Israel and conquer the Galilee, though to many it did not seem like a realistic threat.
That was until Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.
When the war’s focus shifted north, the IDF invited me and other journalists to see one of Hezbollah’s tunnels in southern Lebanon.
It was hard to describe how extensive this facility was, just a few kilometers from Israel’s border. Hezbollah had intended to use the massive underground base as a staging ground for a potential invasion of Israel.
To me, this story shows how much of a threat Hezbollah was to the residents of northern Israel, and how effectively the IDF operated to prevent an invasion by the terror group.
—
Residents returning to Israel’s decimated far north worry their neighbors won’t come home
Diana Bletter, reporter

A US-brokered ceasefire deal halted 14 months of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah on November 27. Some of the 60,000 residents in northern Israel who have been evacuated for more than a year are now able to return home.
But what will they return to? Houses and infrastructure have been damaged if not destroyed, communities have been scattered, and the ceasefire’s duration, at least initially, is only 60 days. The clock is ticking. Residents are skeptical about the security situation and wonder if it is safe enough for them and their neighbors to move back.
—
The 8119th Reserve Battalion
Eli Katzoff, filmmaker
The short film “The 8119th Reserve Battalion,” which features a battalion of reservists serving inside the Gaza Strip, offers an authentic and raw glimpse into the moral struggles soldiers face in a complex and controversial war.
Through the lens of a unit not typically highlighted in mainstream narratives, it provides an intimate, unfiltered perspective of life on the ground — an experience few people get to witness firsthand. Unlike many other films, which often focus on the official, scripted accounts of the IDF, this documentary dives deep into the experiences of soldiers far removed from the spokesperson’s narrative, presenting a genuine portrayal of their challenges, decisions, and humanity amidst conflict. It’s a rare opportunity to understand the realities of war from those who live it daily.
—
Why you should be worried for Israeli democracy
David Horovitz, founding editor

The Times of Israel is that increasingly rare journalistic enterprise — an outlet that is truly independent. We are privileged to be able to do our work without outside intervention, to the best of our abilities, without fear or favor.
In an Israel that, 15 months ago, was plunged into a multifront war by a terrorist government on one border (Hamas), assisted by a mighty terrorist army on another (Hezbollah), both of them backed by a would-be nuclear regional power (Iran), that work has never been more intensive. Given that piercing the fog of war to get to the facts is a relentless challenge, and that the daily developments in this conflict, and its broader context, are often misrepresented, including in many of the world’s best-resourced media outlets, our work is also unprecedentedly complex.
Add to that the fact that embattled Israel is governed by a coalition that has been working to constrict and undermine the independence, capabilities and credibility of the courts and law enforcement, the security establishment, and the media — under a leader who refuses to take responsibility for the failure to thwart the Hamas invasion or allow that failure to be properly investigated — and our obligation to inform our local and global readership about what those in elected office are doing and to hold them accountable has never been more essential.
There are several pieces I’ve written this past year that I’d like to highlight — including on the International Court of Justice’s genocide ruling in January: “Hamas came for everyone it could kill in Israel on Oct 7. Today, The Hague encouraged it“; on the sinister strategy behind anti-Israel campus activism: “The goal of the campus Jew-haters: To render Israel indefensible, in both senses of the word“; and on the aberration that sees most ultra-Orthodox Jewish males excused from the draft: “Evading national service in the Jewish state is the opposite of authentic Judaism.”
But perhaps the piece that’s most important to me is this one, “Why you should be worried for Israeli democracy,” since I’m trying to explain the added, avoidable danger to a tiny Israel, in a region filled with would-be genocidal enemies, of a prime minister and his colleagues relentlessly ripping the country apart from within.
—
From the blogs: The war against the Jewish story
Miriam Herschlag, ops & blogs editor

Writer Yossi Klein Halevi struck a nerve among readers with “The war against the Jewish story.” His very widely read essay, published in May, examines the roots and shocking rise in antisemitism alongside a growing rejection of Israel’s right to exist in peace. Klein Halevi traces a decades-long strategy to isolate Israel by erasing Jewish ties to the Land of Israel, denying the atrocities of October 7, and dismissing Israel’s history of peace offers.
“The ease with which anti-Zionists have managed to portray the Jewish state as genocidal, a successor to Nazi Germany, marks a historic failure of Holocaust education in the West,” writes Klein Halevi. Whether or not readers agree with the essay’s conclusion, the question of how Diaspora Jewry has sunk into its current nadir will, unfortunately, remain salient well into the coming year and beyond.
—
With genocide comments, Nativity visit, pope sows doubts about commitment to Jews
Lazar Berman, diplomatic correspondent

With Israel facing serious external threats and divisive domestic debates, issues like the country’s relationship with the Vatican and the Catholic Church don’t receive much attention. Yet it is of great importance. It is simultaneously a diplomatic issue with a foreign state, a religious dialogue with a massive faith community, a domestic challenge to properly protect and support a minority, and an ongoing question for Jews about how we should relate to a body that was one of our greatest oppressors but now is dedicated to a new relationship based on mutual respect.
Pope Francis was the darling of much of the world when he came into office — warm, engaging, liberal. But few realize that on relations with Jews, he has consistently frustrated his Jewish interlocutors. He is sloppy at best with his words, deaf to criticism, and seems unwilling to change direction.
After October 7, Francis — one of the world’s most visible moral voices — very quickly turned into a critic of Israel. While remaining sensitive to the suffering of the hostages, his statements on the war and Israel’s efforts to defeat a violent terrorist organization used some of the most problematic language in the New Testament and insinuated that there was moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas. He continues to offend Israel and Jews, visiting a Nativity scene showing Jesus on a keffiyeh. Examining the source of the pope’s problematic positions and what it means for the relationship between Jews and Catholics is essential for understanding this crucial diplomatic, religious, and historical dialogue.
—
Documents show Israel sought, valued Qatari aid for Gaza in years leading to Oct. 7
Jacob Magid, US bureau chief

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at Lusail Palace, in Doha on February 6, 2024. (Ronen Zvulun/AP, Mark Schiefelbein/AFP)
In March, I obtained a series of documents revealing how top Israeli officials working under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s direction sought — and expressed their appreciation for — financial support from Qatar to stabilize the humanitarian situation in Gaza in the years and months before October 7.
The documents helped shed light on the Israeli relationship with Qatar, which Netanyahu had long sought to keep in the shadows.
For years, Netanyahu avoided talking publicly about the funds his successive governments secured from Qatar for Gaza over the past decade. But the hundreds of millions of dollars in payments came under renewed scrutiny following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, as the apparent plan to keep Israel’s southern border quiet by improving the economic situation in Gaza dramatically backfired.
Netanyahu has since defended the assistance as necessary for preventing a “humanitarian disaster” in the Strip.
Critics have argued — though the premier insists this wasn’t his goal — that the Qatari aid helped strengthen Hamas at the expense of the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which seeks a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a framework Netanyahu opposes.
—
Anti-Israel US campus groups radicalize, with no one to stop them, experts warn
Cathryn J. Prince, reporter

After spending a year reporting on the ways antisemitism has accelerated on many campuses after the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, it was this story about the increasing radicalization of US college students that, to me, captured what is at stake if not only antisemitism, but also illiberalism, is allowed to go unchallenged and unchecked.
Since the start of the 2024 fall semester, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an anti-Israel coalition of more than 100 student organizations, used explicitly violent rhetoric and images in its online postings. Members of the coalition’s organizations — which include Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace — justified not only the October 7 onslaught but also their own use of violence to achieve their aims.
This story shows the degree to which political violence is becoming increasingly normalized and accepted. As Mitch Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, who previously served as director of intelligence analysis at the New York City Police Department, said in the story: “Columbia is the epicenter for the student intifada in the United States. What happens at Columbia radiates outward.”
—
What Matters Now to two Jewish student leaders at Columbia: ‘Intifada’ on campus
Amanda Borschel-Dan, deputy editor
Observing international university campuses since the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, my natural faith that the next generation will produce problem-solvers and leaders was shaken.
Surreally, these bubbles of global unrest were roiling even as the protesters’ Israeli peers stepped up and were forced to reckon with true evil under difficult conditions. One American student protester’s well-publicized crusade for bottled water and meal-plan food contrasted sharply with thousands of IDF soldiers eating from tinned cans and sleeping with their boots on.
The epicenter of the so-called encampments and large-scale anti-Israel gatherings was Columbia University in New York, where generations of Jews have studied — and taught.
A bit disillusioned with American youth, in May I reached out to two Jewish student leaders at Columbia to hear a counter-narrative. Eden Yadegar, president of Students Supporting Israel, and Elisha H. Baker, a Columbia Political Review editor, articulately framed what they were experiencing and how they were standing up for themselves. Together they showed me that there are warriors fighting for Israel on this front, too.
—
From posters to protests, pro-Israel US campus leaders take varying paths to shared goal
Zev Stub, Diaspora reporter

There is so much antisemitism on US college campuses, it was inspirational to speak with Jewish students who are fighting on behalf of Israel like modern Maccabees. A lot of them barely identified as Jewish before October 7; today they have stepped in to fight against hatred and lies because they felt like it was a personal calling.
—
A century before Claudine Gay, Harvard helped Nazi Germany improve its image in the West
Matt Lebovic, Holocaust correspondent

There is a through-line between pre-Holocaust antisemitism and the climate we see at some elite universities today, including Harvard and Columbia
After the Congressional hearings on campus antisemitism, several university heads stepped down for not doing enough to address the issue. This development was important and stood in contrast to Harvard’s pro-Hitler policies during the Nazi years.
As 2024 closes, we’ve seen a relatively sharp turn on campuses this fall. Some universities are taking steps against antisemitism on their own now. The encampments are mostly gone, as are some chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, a primary instigator. This is a bit of progress to recognize as we enter 2025.
—
From Gaza to LA: Can Paralympics dream help wounded soldiers get back their fighting spirit?
Amy Spiro, news editor

When Israel’s Paralympic team headed to Paris this past August, they were angling for medals not just for themselves and their country, but also to provide hope for the wounded soldiers who could very likely be joining their ranks in the future.
Over the course of nearly 15 months of war, more than 12,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded fighting on several fronts. More than 100 of those wounded suffered spinal injuries, around 60 required amputations and many more suffered serious wounds to their limbs — leaving them contemplating a new path that may not resemble the life they had once dreamed of.
Israeli Paralympic officials flooded the rehab wards with specialized equipment, messages of motivation and emotional support, aiming to provide those wounded with a way to return to active sports, goals to set, a fighting spirit to reclaim and perhaps, one day, a shot at a Paralympic medal.
—
An Israeli tech founder’s journey from a near fatal injury in Gaza to a $100m exit
Sharon Wrobel, tech Israel editor

The story of founder and entrepreneur Itamar Ben Hemo exemplifies the tech sector’s resilience and stamina during one of the longest wars in Israel’s history. Tech startups are struggling as their founders and key personnel are fighting in the war. Tragically, many are getting injured and some are even killed, which is putting one of the most important drivers of the national economy at risk.
Ben Hemo, who volunteered to fight as a reservist and was nearly killed in the line of duty, personifies the immense challenge faced by startups as they attempt to balance going to war on the battlefield in Gaza and continuing to manage their businesses.
—
Inside RAM 2, the IDF Medical Corps unit that cares for hospitalized soldiers
Renee Ghert-Zand, reporter

I visited Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan several times during the war to see how the staff there cared for wounded soldiers. On one of those visits, I learned about RAM 2, the IDF Medical Corps unit dealing with hospitalized soldiers. The unit exists because there are no military-only hospitals in Israel like in the US and some other countries; all wounded soldiers are treated in civilian hospitals. For this reason, a RAM 2 unit is stationed at every major Israel medical center.
RAM 2 units have been staffed during the war mainly by reservists, primarily women. They fulfill many roles and are there for the wounded soldiers from the moment they are rushed from ambulances and helicopters into the trauma room. Their job is to liaise between the IDF and the hospital and between the IDF and the soldier and their family.
I had the opportunity to interview three of the four women who run the RAM 2 unit at Sheba: Lt. Col. (res.) Yonit Malkai, Major (res.) Noam Zinger, and Master Sgt. (res.) Rotem Suissa. On October 7, they donned their olive IDF uniforms and rushed to emergency reserve duty at the hospital for an indeterminate period. “We have been here for months, and we will be here as long as needed,” said unit commander Malkai.
—
‘Arrogance and inherent blindness’: Civil probe slams Netanyahu for Oct. 7 failures
Sam Sokol, political correspondent

In late November, an independent, unofficial civilian commission of inquiry based in Tel Aviv found that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had undermined the government’s national security decision-making process, creating a rift between Israel’s political and military leadership and leaving the country unprepared for Hamas’s devastating October 7, 2023, incursion.
Established by relatives of the victims of the attack this summer in light of Netanyahu’s continued refusal to approve a state commission of inquiry and his insistence that he is not to blame for any of the failures, the commission spent more than four months holding hearings in which it interviewed some 120 witnesses — including former prime ministers, defense chiefs and intelligence officials.
State commissions of inquiry are the inquiry body that enjoys the broadest powers under Israeli law and are empowered to subpoena witnesses, something the civil probe was unable to do. A previous state commission of inquiry earlier this year found that senior government officials, including Netanyahu, were responsible for the 2021 Meron disaster — in which 45 men and boys were killed in the crush at the hilltop gravesite of second-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mount Meron.
—
Flag rescue project lets evacuated Kibbutz Be’eri open school year in customary style
Sue Surkes, reporter

On the surface, this is just an article about a project to repair some school flags, but it brought together so many themes of the past difficult year.
Hamas terrorists murdered one in 10 residents of Kibbutz Be’eri, close to the Gaza border, on October 7, 2023. The community is currently living in temporary accommodation at Kibbutz Hatzerim.
The repair of the flags, which Be’eri’s children have carried on their first day in first grade since 1952, not only allowed the kibbutz to celebrate the first day of school as it has for decades (albeit in a different location), it was an affirmation of life, and of memory, and illustrated the extraordinary solidarity between Israeli volunteers and those affected by the horrific events of October 7.
—
Artist Zeev Engelmayer’s Daily Postcards bring solace with colorful realism
Jessica Steinberg, culture editor

On October 7, 2023, I took on a new beat in addition to arts and culture: writing about the hostages and their families. This task took up all of my time for weeks, figuring out who they were and then speaking to their loved ones — some of them several times over in the last 15 months — to keep their faces and stories on our pages.
About a month and a half after the Hamas onslaught, I realized that I hadn’t written anything about arts and culture for weeks. Very simply, there was nothing to report. Artists, musicians, and creative types weren’t creating, and if they were, they weren’t talking about it because they, like the rest of us, couldn’t tear themselves away from the unfolding terrors and anguish of what took place on October 7.
One of the very first pieces I wrote about an artist in the months after October 7 was about Zeev (“Shoshke”) Engelmayer, a well-known caricaturist and illustrator who began drawing simple, colorful works about the people killed and taken hostage on October 7, and posting them on Instagram. I met Engelmayer in his Tel Aviv apartment, sat with him in his studio, and talked about how we were feeling and dealing with what had happened. Since then, his works have become posters and flyers shown around the world and I follow him regularly, at times reposting his Daily Postcard on my own Instagram feed. Shoshke’s thoughts and feelings often echo my own and that’s helpful, especially on the darkest of days.
—
Amid thrum of war, popular songs of rage and resilience become post-Oct. 7 soundtrack
Gavriel Fiske, reporter

Israel has obviously undergone tremendous changes since October 7, 2023. The political, cultural and economic turmoil has been profound, even as Israeli society has displayed, especially in the months immediately after Hamas’s devastating surprise attack, a deep cohesion and sense of shared mission.
Music, especially popular music, has often been seen as a cultural bellwether, an art form that both shapes and is shaped by society at large. This piece from February 2024 is a snapshot of the Israeli zeitgeist after the initial shock of war but before the long, continuing haul.
—
An outpost settler explains her drive to seize the hilltops
Jeremy Sharon, legal and settlements reporter

In 2024, amid the tumult of a multifront war, young Jewish men and women driven by a radical religious and nationalist ideology established illegal settlement outposts across the West Bank in unprecedented numbers. They did this in order to seize control of large swaths of land, often by establishing “farming outposts” on isolated hilltops where they graze livestock and assert ownership of the surrounding pastures.
These settler activists are frequently secretive and highly suspicious of the media, but The Times of Israel was able to visit one such lonely hilltop outpost and speak with one of its residents to understand what motivated her to move to such a precarious — and illegal — home, and how she sees the future of the conflict with the Palestinians unfolding.
The interview this young mother gave from the veranda of her home in the central West Bank outpost of Sde Ephraim provides a rare, firsthand insight into the fervid convictions, beliefs, and goals of the hilltop settler enterprise.
—
Lev Tahor crumbling with leaders in jail, opponents say, as raid deals cult new blow
Luke Tress, New York correspondent

I had been covering the extremist Jewish group Lev Tahor for years as its leadership was prosecuted in New York for kidnapping. I had heard that the group was struggling because that kidnapping case had put its leaders in prison, and I was looking for a way to tell that story.
When authorities in Guatemala, where the group lives, raided its compound due to alleged child abuse, I was able to write a story that traces the death of Lev Tahor’s founder in 2017 to its travails today.
The Lev Tahor story is dark and dramatic. It highlights the dangers of fanaticism, unchecked power and isolation, but also offers a human element. There are the Haredi volunteers quietly supporting Lev Tahor escapees, former members trying to get their families out, and a mother whose children were kidnapped pleading with a judge for leniency toward her brother, the kidnapper.
—
On anniversary of 1970 Black September hijacking, six survivors on life after captivity
Mati Wagner, reporter

Perspective and context come to mind when I think about how nearly 54 years after the fact, six Jewish survivors are coping with the experience of being held captive in Jordan by terrorists belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
While Israel’s present hostage crisis is unique in terms of duration and scope, Palestinian terrorists have been trying for over five decades to use kidnappings to force Israel to make concessions — usually the release of terrorists jailed by Israel. The 1970 Black September hijacking by the PFLP, which is the focus of my piece, is just one of a long list of attempts by various Palestinian terrorist groups to hold Jews or Israelis captive and use them as human bargaining chips.
Also, by providing a historical perspective and context five decades after the fact, we learn about the heavy long-term emotional impact on hostages from being held in captivity with the constant threat of violent death. Even though the survivors I interviewed were held for no more than three weeks and did not undergo sexual abuse or serious physical harm, all spoke of the traumas that remained with them for decades after their experiences. Several noted how October 7 reignited these traumas. Together, the testimonies shed some light on the psychologically destructive aftereffects of being held in captivity by terrorists.
—
A scientist helps save the world from asteroids. What would the Midrash say?
Rich Tenorio, reporter

The thinnest slice of a crescent moon adorned the evening sky — thinner than the half-moon cookies I brought back as tasty souvenirs from an out-of-this-world event in May at the Vilna Shul, a Jewish arts and cultural center in Boston.
The event was a talk by Dr. Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist who played a key role in an unconventional and historic NASA project — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. Do you ever worry about asteroids crashing into the Earth, a la the dinosaurs or “Don’t Look Up?” Well, NASA has given it some thought and came up with DART — technology that could be used against a potential asteroid threat. In a test run, it was successfully deployed against a harmless asteroid system in 2022. This fall, a European-backed mission was launched to further assess the results.
Chabot brought an asteroid sample billions of years old to the talk, along with plenty of images of DART, which reflected a successful global collaboration to get the job done — an encouraging story in a year often filled with negative news. The event had a Jewish aspect befitting the Vilna’s role as an immigrant shul turned cultural center: If saving a life means rescuing an entire world, as the Midrash says, then what is the equivalent of saving the entire world?
Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.
Sure, we'll remove all ads from your page and you'll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel