Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg, AP

The October 7th War

After weeks of intensive work, we completed the curation of Local Testimony 2023 on October 6th. The following day, on October 7th, a brutal war broke out. After two weeks that felt like an eternity, we returned to observe the photographs selected before the war, trying to understand the connections between them and the reality that changed beyond recognition on that cursed Saturday. In a chilling way, the images representing the year’s central events took on a haunting, ominous significance.

Video Editor: Ran Slavin

Photographers

Roee Idan ZL

On March 30, 2018, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip began a series of mass demonstrations near the border fence with Israel, which they called "The Great March of Return."

Roee Idan ZL's video work, originally shown at Local Testimony 2019, is presented here once again as a haunting, ominous image. On the morning of that Cursed Saturday, photographer Roee Idan ZL managed to leave his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza as the sirens began, documenting the terrorists' motorized paragliders in the skies above the kibbutz. Roee and his wife Smadar ZL were murdered; their young daughter Abigail was abducted to Gaza, while their two other children, Amalia and Michael, were left alone and survived. After fifty days in captivity, Abigail was returned to Israel.

The Roee Idan ZL Photography Award

It is hard to believe what happened to us on October 7th. We watch the images again and again, clinging to the facts, to the testimonies. The three selected photographs are singular testimonies to the horrific massacre that took place in a region that was abandoned during the first days of the war.

Here is the ruined Sderot police station, looking like a set from a dystopian film, bearing witness to the bitter battle that raged there for two full days and claimed many lives; at the Sha'ar HaNegev intersection, cars riddled with bullets and burned are scattered, and there our bodies lie; Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which cried out for help, fighting alone, where dozens of its residents were dragged from their beds, murdered in their homes, or abducted to Gaza, while the Israel Defense Forces, arriving too late, collect the bodies. Gaza

To see and not to believe. 20 years

The Roee Idan ZL Photography Award, named after the photographer murdered by terrorists in his home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, is granted with the support of the Union of Journalists in Israel.