🚨 1/15 🧵

I hadn’t planned to share this project publicly just yet. I’d hoped to one day surprise everyone with the news that a novel I’d been carrying in my mind for the past ten years — based on real events and set in the Israeli army of the late 1990s — was finally finished. I completed it last fall, after two years of intensive work.

Over the past eight months, I’ve queried more than 100 literary agents in the US and over 50 in the UK. Not one expressed interest.

Then I came across this:

“I am NOT a good fit for:
• anything having to do with Nazis, Zionists, or terrorists.”

This is taken directly from a literary agent’s official profile.

After that, things started to fall into place.

Follow the thread. 🧵 2/15

My novel is upmarket military historical fiction. It offers a detailed, realistic look at the training of new recruits in one of the most capable IDF units — the challenges they face and how 18-year-old boys deal with them. The main character goes through every stage of becoming a soldier, transforming along the way and reevaluating everything he thought he knew.

Although military life is central to the novel, at its core this is a story about duty, honor, brotherhood, love, patriotism, and a deep emotional connection to Israel, shaped by memory, sacrifice, and identity.

As far as I know, there’s no other novel that explores the inner world of the IDF with this level of depth.

In the photo below — that’s me during my military service. The Israeli border. Southern Lebanon.

1/6 🧵

Yesterday, a memorial event was held in Beer Ganim in memory of the victims of October 7th.

On that tragic day, Hamas brutally attacked Israel, unleashing a massacre.

Hila Kaylin — the sister of my sister’s husband — was among those murdered at the Nova Music Festival.

Our family lost her that day, and her memory will forever live in our hearts.

Her words, displayed next to her photograph, say it all:

תזכרו לאהוב את החיים,
עם ימי השמש,
עם הימים המעוננים,
עם סופות רעמים,
זה החיים ויש להנות מהם,
תהנו מכל רגע.

Translation:

Remember to love life —
on sunny days,
on cloudy days,
and during storms.
This is life, and we must enjoy it.
Enjoy every moment. 2/6

“Remember to love life —
on sunny days,
on cloudy days,
and during storms.
This is life, and we must enjoy it.
Enjoy every moment.”

— Hila Kaylin

We’re hearing it more and more—especially after October 7th 🧵. People justifying a massacre under the guise of “context.” As if this barbarity was some kind of long-awaited eruption. As if a group of “freedom fighters” merely unleashed decades of “righteous” rage. This narrative, repeated almost verbatim across platforms, tries to reframe October 7th as the natural consequence of 75 years of “oppression.”

They point to 1948 as if it were the beginning of everything—as if the creation of the State of Israel justifies the slaughter of civilians. But let’s not forget: in 1947, the UN proposed a two-state solution. The Jewish leadership accepted it. The Arab leadership rejected it and launched a war instead. That is historical record.

But let’s go back even further. Long before 1948, in the 1930s, there was no “Palestinian people” as the world defines them today. The land was under British Mandate rule, and everyone living there—Jew and Arab alike—was legally classified as Palestinian. The territory wasn’t a country. It was historic Jewish land temporarily administered by the British Empire.

Which brings us to the real question: If there was no Israeli state, no so-called occupation, no displacement—then why were Jews already being hunted, attacked, and murdered?

The answer? Because hatred doesn’t need a reason. And terrorism doesn’t wait for one.
There is no excuse—none—for slaughtering innocent men, women, and children. No narrative, no grievance, no historical revisionism can justify what is, at its core, savagery. To rationalize such brutality is to spit in the face of every human value we claim to uphold.

So let’s be absolutely clear: it didn’t begin in 1948. The Jewish people have been under attack long before modern Israel existed. Back then, just like now, they were forced to defend themselves.

These weren’t isolated incidents. The historical record is filled with them—countless attacks, pogroms, murders. One of the most horrifying was The Tiberias Massacre, which took place on October 2, 1938.

Roughly 70 armed Arabs stormed the Jewish neighborhood of Kiryat Shmuel in Tiberias, murdering 19 people—including 11 children—in cold blood. This wasn’t a clash. It wasn’t a “response.” It was premeditated slaughter, part of the broader Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, which was aimed at halting Jewish immigration and undermining the British Mandate.

The massacre was covered by many newspapers at the time. I’ve chosen to highlight an article from The Palestine Post, dated October 4, 1938. Let me note: this paper operated under strict British censorship, which means some language was likely softened to avoid escalating tensions. Still, the horror is plain to see. The focus is where it belongs—on the victims.

And one more thing: though the Arab Revolt was nominally directed at the British, the authorities—while pretending to be neutral—often adopted policies that skewed unmistakably pro-Arab. This became painfully obvious in 1939, when Britain imposed harsh restrictions on Jewish immigration. That, too, is part of the historical context no one wants to talk about.

So follow the thread 🧵. The full text from The Palestine Post appears below. I’ve also included screenshots of the original article, but reproduced it here for easier reading. 1/

MASSACRE IN TIBERIAS: 19 JEWS KILLED, 3 WOUNDED IN NIGHT ATTACK
Palestinian Jewry in Mourning
About 9 p.m. on Sunday, a large armed gang, after cutting all telephone communications, entered Tiberias. They came in two parties, one from the direction of Safad, through the Kiryat Shmuel quarter, and the other from the South, through the Akiva quarter. Five minutes later, a shrill whistle was heard from the hills around the town, and firing began. It was directed chiefly at the District Offices, the Police Station and the British police billet. Simultaneously fires broke out in the District Offices, a synagogue and six houses in the Akiva quarter. The police turned out at once, and within 25 minutes were reinforced by T.J.F.F. from Samakh. The latter were heavily fired on at a road-block, near the Hot Springs. From about 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. the firing in the town continued. Police and T.J.F.F. reinforced by troops, drove the band from Tiberias at 11 p.m. An immediate curfew was imposed, and the situation is now in hand.
Three houses were chiefly affected by the attack, those of Ben Arieh, Yohannan and Kotin. In Ben Arieh’s house the following were stabbed and burnt to death: Joshua Ben Arieh, Shoshannah his wife, and Arieh his son; while Zarek, his son aged 11 years, was shot dead. Rivka Leimer, Haya Leimer and Ezra Leimer, aged 10, 12 and 8 years respectively, were also in Ben Arieh’s house at the time of the attack and were stabbed and burnt to death. In Yohannan’s house, the following were killed: Rachel Yohannan, aged 28, and five children, Ezra, Miriam, Yocheved, Shmuel and Heftsiba Yohannan, aged 12, 5, 3, 1 and 2 respectively. In Kotin’s house, he himself and his sister were stabbed and burnt to death, but his wife Haya escaped.

1/ November 9, 1938: Kristallnacht 🧵

On the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, synagogues erupted in flames across Germany, Austria, and other territories under the control of the Third Reich. Jewish shops were looted, homes were ransacked, and countless lives were destroyed. Jews were arrested, brutally beaten, subjected to violence, and killed. These events, later known as the “Kristallnacht” or “The Night of Broken Glass”, were an orchestrated pogrom cloaked in Nazi propaganda. Officially, it was presented as a “spontaneous reaction of the people” to the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris.

In reality, it was a meticulously planned operation. In just one night, 1,400 synagogues were destroyed, around 7,000 Jewish shops were looted, and hundreds of homes were devastated. Streets littered with broken glass from shattered windows gave the pogrom its cynical name. Meanwhile, many ordinary Germans silently witnessed the violence or participated in the looting. Most of those who disapproved of the events did not dare to help the Jews, their fear of the regime forcing them to remain on the sidelines. 2/ The trigger for the pogrom – the assassination in Paris

The trigger for the pogrom was the assassination attempt by 17-year-old Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan on German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938. Grynszpan’s family, along with 17,000 other Polish Jews, had been forcibly deported from Germany in October 1938 by order of Heinrich Himmler. They were stranded at the German-Polish border, forced to endure inhumane conditions.

Desperate to draw attention to his family’s plight, Grynszpan shot the German diplomat. Vom Rath died on November 9, providing the Nazis with a convenient pretext to unleash a long-planned campaign of terror against the Jews. Nazi propaganda turned vom Rath into a “victim of the Jewish conspiracy”, with his funeral accompanied by loud slogans and accusations voiced at organized rallies.