LEE YARON

Lee Yaron is an award-winning Israeli journalist.
Her new book, "10/7: 100 Human Stories," won the 2024 National Jewish Book Award Book of the Year — and the 2025 Natan Notable Books award.

At 30, Yaron is the youngest Book of the Year recipient in the award's history. She joins distinguished past winners including Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel, David Grossman and Amos Oz.

She was selected for the prestigious 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Her investigative journalism on corruption, social issues, and environmental concerns has prompted the establishment of state-level commissions and driven changes in Israeli policy and law. This work earned her the 2022 Yitzhak Livni "Knight" Award for Free Speech in Media. She currently serves as an elected member-representative on the Executive Committee of the Union of Israeli Journalists.

Haaretz Journalist

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Author of 10/7: 100 Human Stories

"A masterpiece of journalism, and of what can only be called humanism"

-Adam Gopnik, staff writer for The New Yorker

"Yaron's book transcends race, religion, and politics. An evocative and intimate page-turner [that] should be read, shared, and retold."

—The Jerusalem Post

“If you care about Israel, and you care about Palestine, there is no more important book to read than 10/7.”

—Kai Bird

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Crossing Mandelbaum Gate, American Prometheus, and The Good Spy, director of the Leon Levy Center

“10/7 is a shocking but heartfelt book, whose empathy is the only way forward.”

—Nicole Krauss

Author of History of Love, Great House, Forest Dark, and To Be A Man

"Yaron manages to escape the need to prove anyone’s worth. They just are. And who they are also represents a wide swath of Israeli society.. In these stories, the violence of that day is a rupture in reality, indiscriminate and unforgiving"

―The Atlantic

“Framed as a journalist’s first draft of history, this book is actually an elegy for those murdered, assaulted, and kidnapped on October 7.”

—Noah Feldman

Author of Scorpions and To Be A Jew Today

"The book's power lies in its ability to contextualize the victims' experiences within the broader scope of their familial trajectories, at the intersection of investigative journalism and oral history.”

—Le Monde

Recent Articles

About

Climate Correspondent, Haaretz, Israel’s oldest and most award-winning newspaper
Founder, Green Idea, the Middle East's first journalist training program dedicated to climate coverage
Elected Representative, Executive Committee, the Union of Journalists in Israel
Winner of the 2022 Yitzhak Livni “Knight” Award for Free Speech in Media, for "exceptional professionalism, relentless determination, and an unswerving pursuit of the truth"
Director and Playwright, Kishta, a documentary satire on Knesset proceedings with an all-refugee cast (Tzavta Theatre, Tel Aviv)
Director, Good Energies, a documentary satire on governmental handling of gas and oil revenues (Theatronetto Festival, Jaffa)
Host, Tel Aviv 360, Tel Aviv University podcast
Environmental Fellow, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs and the Climate School
Co-Founder, DOCU-CLIMATE, Docaviv Film Festival

Public Speaking

Selected Articles

2023

2022

2021

2020

Articles from 2015 - 2020 can be found in the Haaretz archives.

Green Idea

Green Idea is the Middle East's first journalist training program dedicated to climate coverage, offering free education to journalists. The program focuses on teaching journalists how to integrate climate issues and data into their reporting, aiming to raise public awareness through increased media coverage of climate change in the Middle East. The program operates under the auspices of Tel Aviv University and has trained approximately 400 journalists to date. As a result, there has been a threefold increase in climate crisis coverage within the Israeli media landscape during the program's inaugural year. Prior to the training program, climate change accounted for only 0.5% of Israel's media coverage.

Traditional approaches to addressing the climate crisis, such as relying on politicians' actions or large corporations changing their behavior, have proven ineffective over the years. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, with a limited time frame of less than seven years to prevent the worst consequences, the press has a unique role to play. Journalists can serve as a crucial bridge between short-term interests (politicians and capitalists supporting polluting fossil fuel industries) and the long-term public interest in transitioning away from fossil fuels. They can connect scientific findings, political inaction, and public indifference, potentially leading to a tipping point in public and political perceptions that can help prevent irreversible damage to climate systems. In essence, journalists have the potential to play a pivotal role in driving effective action to combat the climate crisis by bringing attention, clarity, and urgency to the issue.

Articles about Green Idea (Hebrew):