Ilan Troen, a Brandeis University professor emeritus, at his residence in Omer, Israel. His daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Mathias, had been killed within the Hamas assault on Oct. 7, 2023.

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Ilan Troen, a Brandeis University professor emeritus, at his residence in Omer, Israel. His daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Mathias, had been killed within the Hamas assault on Oct. 7, 2023.

Tamir Kalifa for NPR

OMER, Israel — One hundred days in the past, on Oct. 7, American-Israeli historian Ilan Troen stood over his 16-year-old grandson’s hospital mattress. The bullet that killed his daughter had pierced his grandson’s stomach.

I found Troen in the hospital sporting a Brandeis University t-shirt. He was certainly one of my professors after I studied there.

Three months later, I visited his residence in Israel’s southern desert, the place he’s now retired, to listen to his reflections — as a historian and bereaved dad or mum — about Israel’s deadliest day in historical past, and the deadliest battle that Palestinians have ever confronted, nonetheless ongoing in Gaza.

A basso continuo of unhappiness

“How am I?” Troen asks, on his front room sofa. “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.”

Music was his daughter and son-in-law’s life. Deborah and Shlomi Mathias had been singers who met in music college.

On Oct. 7, attackers from Gaza stormed their residence and blew down the door of their strengthened protected room. The mother and father protected their son, Rotem, with their our bodies, saving his life as they misplaced theirs.

Photographs of Deborah and Shlomi Mathias with their three youngsters are displayed at Deborah’s mother and father’ residence in Omer, Israel.

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Photographs of Deborah and Shlomi Mathias with their three youngsters are displayed at Deborah’s mother and father’ residence in Omer, Israel.

Tamir Kalifa for NPR

Burying them of their residence group enveloped in battle, Kibbutz Holit close to the Gaza border, was out of the query. Instead, the household wrestled with one other query: what to jot down on their gravestones.

“It was the children who decided that they would not put on their parents’ gravestone what some other people have done…’may God avenge their blood.’ They wanted nothing of that,” Troen says.

Instead, their three youngsters inscribed the gravestones with musical notes: the opening bars of Brit Olam, or “Everlasting Covenant,” a basic Israeli love tune that Deborah, who glided by the Hebrew title Shahar, had sung with Shlomi at their very own wedding ceremony.

“It’s a way of saying that the years to come…they will not focus on the tragic,” Troen says, “But rather on the beauty in their lives.”

Caring for his or her orphaned grandchildren

Rotem, Troen’s 16-year-old grandson who survived the Oct. 7 assault, got here to stick with his grandparents Ilan and Carol after he was launched from the hospital. A day later, Carol was at her front room desk when he screamed from the opposite room.

“Just screaming, ‘Why? Why? Why? It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair,'” Carol says. “And I screamed back, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ Because I had to answer him…I just screamed with him.”

Carol Troen at her residence in Omer, Israel. Her daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Mathias, had been killed within the Hamas assault on October 7.

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Carol Troen at her residence in Omer, Israel. Her daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Mathias, had been killed within the Hamas assault on October 7.

Tamir Kalifa for NPR

The day I visited the Troens, their grandson was maybe on the lookout for solutions. He was visiting his residence in Kibbutz Holit for the primary time since he was attacked inside it. Carol was boiling soup on the range for her three orphaned grandkids. An Israeli warplane roared above.

“It’s on its way to Gaza,” Troen stated.

“Maybe she would understand”

More than 23,000 Palestinians, largely ladies and kids, have been killed in Gaza within the Israeli bombardment, in accordance with well being officers there. The battle got here after Hamas led an ambush on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 folks in southern Israel, in accordance with Israeli officers.

Now the battle has reached a crescendo on the world stage. Israel stands accused of genocide on the International Court of Justice.

“Crimes against humanity? We were defending ourselves,” Troen says. “This isn’t vengeance. This is protection. Self-defense.”

Ilan Troen shows a photograph from 1975 of his household on the land the place they constructed their residence in Omer, Israel. In the picture, Troen holds his daughter Deborah when she was younger. She was killed Oct. 7, 2023.

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Ilan Troen shows a photograph from 1975 of his household on the land the place they constructed their residence in Omer, Israel. In the picture, Troen holds his daughter Deborah when she was younger. She was killed Oct. 7, 2023.

Tamir Kalifa for NPR

His daughter Deborah believed in the opportunity of peace along with her neighbors. She despatched her youngsters to Hagar, a rare elementary school in Israel’s south, the place Jewish and Arab youngsters research collectively. I requested Troen what his daughter may take into consideration the way in which Israel is waging its war in Gaza and its excessive human toll.

“I think she would be appalled and concerned, maybe angry, but maybe she would understand,” he says. “If you know of a better way, kindly tell us, what (is) the better, cleaner, nicer way of dealing with the kind of threat that we have to face, that has continually risen to achieve its ultimate divinely-inspired and commanded goal of exterminating us.”

The immeasurable

There’s one thing else Troen has considered extra deeply because the October seventh assault: Israel’s management over Palestinian lives. His metropolis, Omer, is near the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and fewer than 30 miles from the Gaza Strip.

“The capacity of one nation, however powerful it is, to totally suppress a movement of popular resistance that is deeply rooted in the population is not a very good record,” Troen says. “Palestinians are going to need to obtain what they so desperately want, which is what we so desperately want, which is a state of our own.”

Ilan and Carol Troen at their residence in Omer, Israel.

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Ilan and Carol Troen at their residence in Omer, Israel.

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Troen calls it an older perception, beforehand extra summary to him, that grew to become extra pertinent after Oct. 7 and the times since.

“It’s so palpable and visible,” he says. “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.”

Those are the measurements of an insupportable state of battle, alongside the immeasurable losses Troen’s household, and so many others, have endured these final 100 days.