By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Slightly longer than an hour and a half, the documentary The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue has the Tibon family describing how Noam Tibon, a retired major general in the Israel Defense Force, dramatically rescued his son Amir, daughter-in-law Miri, and their two daughters Galia, 3, and Carmel, 1, after Hamas terrorists from Gaza stormed Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Oct. 7, 2023.
The movie, directed and written by Barry Avrich, will be shown this Friday, Oct. 3, at the Lot La Jolla 7 and at AMC Mission Valley San Diego 20.
Amir, a journalist with the Ha’aretz newspaper, used his cellphone to tell Naom, in Tel Aviv, that he was currently holed up in the locked safe room of his home. He said he and his wife could hear the terrorists firing their guns outside – and possibly inside – their home and that it was all he and his wife could do to keep his toddler daughters quiet.
Noam and his wife, Gali, without hesitation set out in their Jeep for the 45-mile drive from Tel Aviv to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz with 595 population lying a half mile from the Gaza border. In ordinary circumstances, drive time is an hour and a half between Israel’s commercial center and the small community that is part of Sha’ar Hanegev, San Diego’s sister city in Israel. But the circumstances of this drive were anything but normal.
On the road to Nahal Oz, Noam and Gali encountered Bar and Lior Liani, who had fled for their lives from the Supernova Festival, an outdoor music happening where on that fateful day, 378 youngsters were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, the largest group within the 1,200 murder victims and 250 taken hostage.
The Lianis jumped out from the bushes lining the highway and pleaded for help. Recognizing that the couple was approximately the same ages as Amir and Miri, the Tibons turned around their Jeep and drove the young husband and wife to northern Ashkelon.
Retracing their route, driving between burned out cars and corpses lying on the highway, the couple made it to Mefalsim, a sister kibbutz to Nahal Oz. There they spotted seven terrorists brandishing automatic weapons and with the assistance of a small IDF detachment on the scene, they killed all seven. In the firefight, an IDF officer had been shot in the stomach and was bleeding heavily. Unless he was taken to a hospital soon, he’d die. Gali volunteered to drive him to Ashkelon after Noam met serendipitously with his old commanding officer, General Israel Ziv, with whom he drove to a small, burning, military base neighboring Nahal Oz.
At 4 p.m., now accompanied by units of the IDF, Noam reached his son’s house and knocked on the metal covering of the room’s one window. “Amir,” he called, “It’s dad! Open the door.”
Realizing they were now safe, Amir, Miri, and the two little girls who had obeyed their parents’ instructions to remain quiet, emerged from the safe room. The little girls enthusiastically hugged their saba.
IDF forces gathered Nahal Oz residents into one house per neighborhood to better protect them as Hamas and the IDF traded gunfire. When it was safe to do so, the residents were loaded into buses and were eventually transported to Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek, in the northern part of Israel.
The Nahal Oz death toll was 11 members, including the Tibons’ next door neighbor Ilan Fiorentino, the kibbutz director of security; 2 rapid response team members; and 2 foreign nationals. Eight persons were taken hostage. The nearby military installation suffered 53 soldiers massacred.
Noam retraces his activities for the documentary, stopping at such venues as the place where he and Gali encountered the Lianis, the firefight in Sha’ar Hanegev, and the home in Nahal Oz where his children and grandchildren hid in a safe room for nine unforgettable hours.
*
Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World