< What a bereaved father, a historian of Israel, believes after 100 days of war

January 14, 20248:41 AM ET

What a bereaved father, a historian of Israel, believes after 100 days of war

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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

One hundred days ago, NPR's Daniel Estrin found American Israeli historian Ilan Troen in a hospital in southern Israel standing by his 16-year-old grandson's hospital bed.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Daughter and...

ILAN TROEN: My daughter and son-in-law were killed today but, in their dying, saved his life.

ESTRIN: How?

I TROEN: They fell at his body. They were all together in the secure room, and they covered his body, and he was saved.

RASCOE: Israeli officials say about 1,200 people were killed on October 7, the deadliest day in Israeli history. And according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel's military started to strike back. Estrin visited Troen again at his home in southern Israel to hear how he has reflected on the war as a historian and as a bereaved parent.

I TROEN: Shalom.

ESTRIN: Shalom, shalom.

I TROEN: Hi, Daniel.

ESTRIN: Hey, Ilan.

I know Ilan Troen from when I studied at Brandeis University near Boston. He's a scholar of Israeli history, now retired. He lives in Omer, in Israel's southern desert with his wife, Carol.

The first thing I want to ask you is, how are you?

I TROEN: How am I? In baroque music, there's something called the basso continuo. If you listen to Bach, there's that bottom line that continues, and my basso continuo is one of sadness.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DEBORAH MATIAS AND SHLOMI MATIAS: (Singing in non-English language).

ESTRIN: This is a song his daughter Deborah and son-in-law Shlomi recorded. They were musicians, both killed on October 7.

I TROEN: What do you put on a gravestone? It was the children who decided that they would not put on their parent's gravestone what some other people have done - that may God avenge their blood. They wanted nothing of that. Instead, they did something very beautiful.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

D MATIAS AND S MATIAS: (Singing in non-English language).

ESTRIN: Their children inscribed the gravestones with musical notes - the opening bars of the love song Deborah and Shlomi sang at their own wedding.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

D MATIAS AND S MATIAS: (Singing in non-English language).

I TROEN: And it's a way of saying that the years to come - that they will not focus on the tragic, but rather on the beauty in their lives.

ESTRIN: The bullet that killed Deborah pierced her teenage son, Rotem. At the moment, he's staying here with his grandparents, Ilan and Carol. Here's Carol.

CAROL TROEN: He said, I guess, the day after he got out of the hospital, in his room - was just screaming, why? Why? Why? It's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair. And I screamed back, why? Why? Why? - because I had to answer him, and I just screamed with him.

ESTRIN: The day I visited the Troens, their grandson was, maybe, looking for answers. He was visiting his home for the first time since he was attacked inside it. Carol was boiling soup on the stove for her three orphaned grandkids. An Israeli warplane roared above.

I TROEN: It's on its way to Gaza.

ESTRIN: Now the war has reached a crescendo on the world stage. Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

I TROEN: Crimes against humanity? We were defending ourselves. This isn't vengeance. This is protection, self-defense.

ESTRIN: Their daughter, Deborah, believed in the possibility of peace with her neighbors. She sent her children to a rare elementary school where Jewish and Arab kids studied together. I asked Professor Troen what his daughter might think about the way Israel is waging its war in Gaza and its high human toll.

I TROEN: I think she would be appalled and concerned, maybe angry. But maybe she would understand. If you know of a better way, kindly tell us, tell the world, what the better, cleaner, nicer way of dealing with the kind of threat that we have to face that has - like a phoenix, has continually re-risen after being quashed to achieve its ultimate, divinely inspired and commanded goal of exterminating us.

ESTRIN: But there's something else Troen has thought about more deeply since the October 7 attack - Israel's control over Palestinian lives.

I TROEN: What is ever more etched in my mind is that somehow, the Arabs, Palestinian Arabs, need their own state. And I hope that that, somehow, in this devastatingly unfortunate way - that this will push us in that direction.

ESTRIN: What about these events have brought you to feel that that is more deeply etched in you? I mean...

I TROEN: Well, because it's so palpable and visible. You're sitting in my house today, which is a 45-second distance in flight time from Gaza by a missile. We could go downstairs, and I could take you to my bomb shelter - 16 inches of reinforced concrete. I'd always known this, but experiencing - what? - the attack that we felt on October 7 has made it ever more powerful.

ESTRIN: The measurements of an intolerable state of conflict alongside the immeasurable - what Ilan Troen's family and so many others have lost in these 100 days.

Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Omer in southern Israel.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAVINIA MEIJER'S "LA VALSE D'AMELIE")

RASCOE: And elsewhere in the program, we'll have the latest from Gaza and the West Bank.

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