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An award-winning documentary photographer captured the devastation of communities, the resilience of citizens, and the experiences of the bereaved, offering a powerful firsthand account of a nation in crisis.
On October 7, 2023, Israel faced unprecedented chaos as Hamas terrorists launched a massacre of civilians in Israel, marked by unimaginable cruelty. Award-winning documentary photographer Ziv Koren immediately recognized the need to capture this horror, embarking on a monumental project to document the destruction, along with the fighting that continues to this day.
Over five months, Koren chronicled the events that transformed Israel forever, taking over a quarter of a million photographs of the massacres in the south, military operations, and life on the home front. His work captured the devastation of communities, the resilience of citizens, and the experiences of the bereaved, offering a powerful firsthand account of a nation in crisis.
The October 7 WAR by Ziv Koren serves as a profound visual history of one of the most significant events in Israeli history. Blending sorrow and hope, it highlights the heroism of ordinary citizens and soldiers while presenting a stark collage of trauma and resilience. Published to ensure we remember and never forget; it stands as a testament to the strength of the Israeli spirit.
Abandoned and partially burned cars scattered across Highway 34 – evidence of the massacre that took place on Saturday morning.
A Hamas mortar shell landed on the road just as this photograph was taken. Gunfire could be heard all around.
A vehicle riddled with bullets from the terrorists, its passengers shot dead. During that bloody Saturday, over 80 civilians and security personnel were murdered and fell in the city of Sderot.
Israeli forces rush to aid the photojournalists caught in the terror ambush. The IDF soldiers were driving in the opposite direction when they noticed the photographers lying on the road next to their cars, trying to take cover. The soldiers quickly took up positions behind the median barrier for their assault.
A direct hit by a missile on an apartment building in the southern city. In a heavy barrage fired at noon that day toward Ashkelon and Ashdod, several residents were injured, some of them seriously. Several buildings suffered direct hits, and cars caught fire.
An alarm in the middle of the road: Orit Gutkind and her three children take shelter on the side of the road upon hearing a red alert siren.
The doll of 13-year-old Hila Rotem Shoshani left at the entrance of her home. On October 7th, Hila was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri along with her mother Raya and her friend Emily Hand. She refused to part with the doll until one of the captors snatched it from her hand. Hila, Emily and Raya returned to Israel as part of the prisoner exchange deal.
After days of body removal from the kibbutz, a ZAKA volunteer breaks down on the shoulder of a Counter-Terrorism Unit fighter.
Bloodstains on the floor of a family home in the kibbutz bear witness to the horror that unfolded here.
The numerous bullet holes in the ceiling of one of the Be’eri homes - evidence of the hell that unfolded in the kibbutz on the morning of October 7th.
After four days of heavy fighting and exposure to the horrific sights of carnage that the terrorists perpetrated in the Gaza Envelope communities, counterterrorism unit reservist Yair Ansbacher cannot hold back tears at the sight of the holiday table prepared for the Sabbath and Simchat Torah celebrations. The image gained widespread publicity in Israel and sparked resonance around the world, becoming one of the photographs most identified with the October 7 massacre.
ZAKA personnel collect human remains in one of the kibbutz homes. Many bodies were desecrated – mutilated and burned.
The volunteers performed holy work to gather the remains for proper burial.
Vehicles collected from the southern roads of Israel near Gaza and from the area of the Nova festival in Re’im piled one on top of the other at a makeshift junkyard. Around 1,600 vehicles were hit by gunfire and rockets on October 7, some of them set on fire and completely burned.
The heartbreaking Shabbat table, set with over 200 empty places, became a sad monument honoring the Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza and demanding that they be released. This symbolic table, assembled at Hostage Square in front of the Tel Aviv Museum, was replicated throughout Israel and in many cities across the world.
The funeral for the five members of the Kutz family from Kfar Aza. Fifty-three-year-old Aviv, 49-year-old Livnat, and their three children Rotem (19), Yonatan (16), and Yiftach (14) were murdered on the morning of October 7. Responding rescue forces found the family embracing one another in one bed. The family had moved back to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Aviv grew up, four years earlier in 2019.
The funeral of Naor Hasidim, who was murdered along with his girlfriend Sivan Elkabetz.
Ilanit Levy parts with her son before he is laid to eternal rest. Twenty-four-year-old Major Ilay Levy, a platoon commander in the 202nd Battalion of the 35th Paratroopers Brigade, fell in battle in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. His younger sister Ori enlisted in the IDF on the day he fell.
The task of identifying the victims continues and is expected to take much longer. Since the October 7th attack, day by day and hour by hour, bodies and human remains are being removed from the cooling containers for forensic examinations including DNA, fingerprints and bite marks.
An M-109 self-propelled howitzer from a reserve artillery battery fires 155mm shells into the Gaza Strip. Intensive artillery fire, along with air strikes, created a “rolling curtain of fire” that assisted the IDF advance into Gaza.
Reservists, part of an artillery battery, prepare to fire shells at targets in the Strip. In the days of preparation for the ground maneuver, the IDF amassed forces on the border on a scale not seen since the 2006 Second Lebanon War – five divisions, including infantry, armored, combat engineering, artillery, special forces, and many supporting units.
Hundreds of volunteers prepare 15,000 hamburgers daily for IDF soldiers and security personnel in the area of the conflict line in the south.
Soldiers from the Jerusalem Brigade place explosives at the entrance of a terror tunnel located in the eastern Gaza Strip. Months later, the IDF estimated that there were no fewer than 5,700 tunnel shafts in the Gaza Strip, providing entry points for a network of tunnels hundreds of kilometers long.
Kfir Brigade infantrymen examine weapons and ammunition found during the operation to capture Shuja’iyya. Nearly every building in the neighborhood contained large amounts of weapons, allowing Hamas operatives posing as innocent civilians to surprise IDF soldiers.
Yael Golan was wounded along with her parents Elai and Ariel in their home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. All three were severely burned after the terrorists threw a butane gas cylinder into the house and set it on fire. The parents shielded Yael with their bodies and later managed to escape through a window. Yael’s grandparents were by her side at the hospital while her parents were sedated due to extensive burns on their bodies.
"After losing friends, home, and community," says Dr. Elai Hogeg Golan, "we are learning to rehabilitate ourselves.”
Ben and Gali "making a train" on their way to physiotherapy practice. The couple was wounded by grenades thrown by the terrorists into the shelter they were hiding in after fleeing the Nova music festival.
Both lost their right leg.
The Yahalom unit has played a major role in the Iron Swords War. On October 7, Yahalom teams were rushed to the besieged communities around Gaza. They battled terrorists, rescued and evacuated civilians, and cleared numerous improvised explosive devices.
This massive subterranean terror tunnel – the largest found in northern Gaza – was constructed at the direction of Mohammed Deif, the elusive head of the Hamas military wing (believed killed in an Israeli strike on July 12, 2024). It was discovered by operators from Yahalom, the Engineering Corps’ special operations unit, as they searched for the Hamas tunnel network that became known as the “Gaza Metro”.
IDF soldiers move through Beit Lahia. The reservists left their families, jobs, and daily routines to defend the country – some of them for months of combat operations with no end in sight.
Twenty-one-year-old Mia Schem with her sister Danny, two days after undergoing a complex orthopedic surgery. Close to the time the photo was taken, Mia was informed that her good friend Eliya Toledano, with whom she spent time at the Nova festival, was no longer alive. Mia, who was abducted from the party in Re’im and was considered missing for days, returned from Gaza after 55 days in captivity. Mia became a well-known and identifiable figure in Israel and around the world after appearing in the first video of hostages released by Hamas.
The five members of the Kutz family – Aviv, Livnat, Rotem, Yonatan, and Yiftach, are laid to rest.
Proud mother of a Yahalom fighter. Thank you for recognizing their contributions, especially on Oct. 7th.
Every time I'm reminded, as these photos attest to, of what went down on the fateful day, i'm in shock. Despite the human loss and suffering, the post Oct 7 disgusting manifestations of anti-Jew hatred, predominantly in the West, were another kick in the teeth. These "protesters" have no empathy, no soul, nothing. They know not what they do, and they'll pay a price in one form or another for their sickening behavior.
😭😭😭