Drafted 2 October 2024, updated 8 July 2025.
Below the wall in the West Bank, which I photographed in 2019 : it is “a system of physical barriers built by Israel in the West Bank since the spring of 2002.
It stretches over a controversial 730 km route that has been redrawn several times due to international pressure and consists for its entire length of an alternating wall and fence with electronic gates’.
I first heard about it from Daniel Barenboim at the Franco Parenti Theatre in Milan, years ago.
Barenboim had set up a mixed orchestra of Israelis and Palestinians.
David Grossman: Israel is in a nightmare. Who will we be when we rise from the ashes?We can only imagine the extent of the fear and hatred that will now surface
David Grossman is one of Israel’s greatest writers; he lost a 20-year-old son in Lebanon in the war against Hezbollah in 2006. He is the author of ‘More Than I Love My Life’ and winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2017 and the Israel Prize 2018 . Article translated by Alessandra Sgarbi
Around 1,000 dead, more than 3,000 injured, dozens taken hostage. Each survivor is a miraculous story of resourcefulness and courage. Countless miracles, countless acts of heroism and sacrifice by soldiers and civilians. I look at people’s faces and see shock. Numbness. Our hearts are weighed down by a constant weight. Over and over again we tell ourselves: this is a nightmare. A nightmare without comparison. There are no words to describe it. There are no words to contain it.
I also see a deep sense of betrayal. A betrayal of citizens by their government, the prime minister and his destructive coalition. A betrayal of everything precious to us as citizens, and particularly as citizens of this state. A betrayal of its formative and binding idea. Of the most precious deposit of all – the national home of the Jewish people – which was handed over to its leaders to safeguard, and which they should have treated with reverence. Instead, what have we seen? What have we become accustomed to seeing, as if it were inevitable?
What we have seen is the total abandonment of the state in favour of petty and greedy agendas and cynical, narrow-minded and delusional politics. What is happening now is the concrete price Israel is paying for having been seduced for years by a corrupt leadership that took it from bad to worse; that eroded its institutions of law and justice, its army, its educational system; that was willing to put it in existential danger to keep its prime minister out of jail. I also see a deep sense of betrayal. The betrayal of the citizens by their government, their prime minister and his destructive coalition Just think now of the one we have been working with for years. Think of all the energy, thought and money we wasted watching Netanyahu and his family play out their Ceaușescu-style dramas. Think of the grotesque illusions they produced for our incredulous eyes.
For the past nine months, millions of Israelis have taken to the streets every week to protest against the government and the man in charge. It has beena movement of enormous significance, an attempt to get Israel back on track, back to the noble idea behind its existence: to create a home for the Jewish people. And not just any home. Millions of Israelis wanted to build a liberal, democratic, peace-loving state that respected the faith of all peoples. But instead of listening to what the protest movement had to offer, Netanyahu chose to discredit it, to paint it as a traitor, to incite against it, to deepen the hatred among its factors. Yet he took every opportunity to declare how powerful Israel was, how determined it was, and, above all, how well prepared it was to face any threat. Tell that to the parents driven mad with grief, the child thrown on the side of the road. Tell that to the hostages. Tell that to the people who voted for you. Tell that to the 80 breaches in the world’s most advanced border fence.
But don’t be fooled, and don’t be confused: with all the fury against Netanyahu, his people and his policies, the horror of the last few days has not been caused by Israel. It was carried out by Hamas. Occupation is a crime, but shooting hundreds of civilians – children and parents, the elderly and the sick in cold blood – is a worse crime. Even in the hierarchy of evil, there is a ‘ranking’. There is a scale of severity that common sense and natural instincts can identify. And when you see the killing fields at the music festival site, when you see Hamas terrorists on motorbikes chasing young revelers, some of whom are still dancing without realising what is going on…
I don’t know if Hamas agents should be called ‘animals’, but they have undoubtedly lost their humanity.
We move through these nights and days like sleepwalkers. Trying to resist the temptation to watch the horrific clips and listen to the voices. Feeling the fear creeping in among those who, for the first time in 50 years – since the Yom Kippur war – are experiencing the terrifying prospect of defeat. Who will we be when we rise from the ashes and re-enter our lives? When we viscerally feel the pain of writer Haim Gouri’s words, written during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, ‘How numerous are those who are no longer with us’. Who will we be and what kind of human beings will we be after seeing what we have seen? Where will we start after the destruction and loss of so many things we believed in and trusted? I pray that there are Palestinians in the West Bank who, despite their hatred for Israel – their occupier – differ from what their compatriots have done. If I may hazard a guess: Israel after the war will be much more right-wing, militant and racist. The war imposed on it will have cemented the most extreme and hateful stereotypes and prejudices that frame – and will continue to frame even more robustly – Israeli identity. And that identity will henceforth also embody the trauma of October 2023, as well as the polarisation, the internal fracture. Could it be that what was lost – or suspended indefinitely – on 7 October was the tiny possibility of a true dialogue, a true acceptance by each nation of the other’s existence? And what do those who brandish the absurd notion of a ‘bi-national state’ now say? Israel and Palestine, two nations distorted and corrupted by endless wars, cannot even be each other’s cousins – does anyone still believe they can be Siamese twins? Many years without war will have to pass before acceptance and healing can be considered. In the meantime, we can only imagine the extent of the fear and hatred that will now rise to the surface. I hope, I pray, that there are Palestinians in the West Bank who, despite their hatred for Israel – their occupier – will distinguish themselves, in both actions and words, from what their compatriots have done. As an Israeli, I have no right to preach to them or tell them what to do. But as a human being, I have the right – and the obligation – to demand humane and moral conduct from them.
Late last month, the leaders of the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia spoke enthusiastically about a peace agreement between Israel and the Saudis, which would be based on Israel’s normalisation agreements with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. The Palestinians barely feature in these agreements. Netanyahu, arrogant and self-confident, has succeeded – in his own words – in severing the link between the Palestinian problem and Israel’s relations with the Arab states. The Israeli-Saudi agreement is no stranger to the events of ‘Black Saturday’ between Gaza and Israel. The peace it would create is a peace of the rich. It is an attempt to skip the heart of the conflict.
These past few days have shown that it is impossible to begin to resolve the Middle East tragedy without offering a solution that alleviates the suffering of the Palestinians. Are we capable of shaking off worn-out formulas and realising that what has happened here is too immense and too terrible to be seen through stale paradigms? Even Israel’s conduct and its crimes in the occupied territories for 56 years cannot justify or soften what has been laid bare: the depth of hatred towards Israel, the painful realisation that we Israelis will always have to live here in heightened alertness and constant preparation for war. In a relentless effort to be both Athens and Sparta at the same time. And a fundamental doubt that we will ever be able to lead a normal, free life, free from threats and anxieties. A life that is stable and secure. A life that is home.
Unfortunately, perhaps Israel was ‘home’ for Israelis, somewhat less so for Palestinians, as evidenced by the wall I saw with my own eyes in 2019.
perhaps the only chance for lasting peace in the Middle East is, as Omer Mei Wellber says in Repubblica of 19 May 2024, ‘a future without Hamas and without Netanyahu’.
Read about it: Israel’s tragic mistakes, for Israel’s sake or Etgar Keret ‘s point of view below.
Professor Emeritus Daniel Bar- Tal of Tel Aviv University in his lengthy book “The Trap of Intractable Conflicts” (2024) , explains even better what Keret expounds and says that: “the forces that led Israel to expand the Jewish colonies in the West Bank, outside the internationally recognised conflicts of the state. He explains how the psychology of the occupation and the ideas behind it have corrupted Israeli Jewish society to the point of diverting its democratic development with the rise of an authoritarian regime marked by extremist nationalism and religious fanaticism that were among the causes of the Gaza war…”.
While: ‘After eighteen months, they are literally living in hell’: the hostage issue in Israel, a slow poison in society. In a wounded country, the stories of the freed hostages revive day after day the wounds and anger, even hatred, helping to explain why a real debate is not emerging on the proportionality of the Israeli response in Gaza.
Of course I agree with Grossman when he says: “The children of Gaza need hope for the future. Giving it back to them is our duty”
I recall – as mentioned at the beginning – that his 20-year-old son Uri, a conscript in 2006, was killed by an anti-tank missile during an IDF operation in southern Lebanon.
The anti-Bibi revolt of the reservists “In Gaza a personal war”
The premier mocks them: pensioners
JERUSALEM
He calls them ‘pensioners’, yet they are among the few Israeli soldiers who cannot wear their insignia in public, so clandestine and secret are the operations of the Sayeret Matkal. They do not need to recognise each other when there is a letter to sign in support of what they believe in, in defence of the state they fought for and which Benjamin Netanyahu – they warn – is trying to subvert.
At least 1,500 veterans of the special forces – also of the Shaldag unit, comparable to the American Seals – signed a letter calling for an end to the war against Hamas in Gaza because – they claim – it no longer has the goal of bringing hostages home: still 59 are held by the terrorists, only 22 are reportedly still alive. “The battles continue for personal and political interests”.
Among those who have put their first name and surname, some only initials for security reasons, one goes back through the generations to Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in the History of Israel, who was Bibi’s commander in Sayeret Matkal, until he became his political opponent as Labour leader and in these months of protests one of the most lucid critics. Many of the ‘pensioners’ are actually still on active duty, at least 16 per cent among the elite squads. So they explain that they do not promote desertion, they confirm that they respect the call of the general staff. But they subscribe to the passages of the document published a week ago by the reservist jet pilots: ‘The offensive now no longer contributes to its stated objectives, it will lead to the deaths of abductees, military personnel and innocent civilians’…
The far right tries to reduce the scope of the rebellion in the armed forces and intelligence services (even former Mossad chiefs join the opposition), as it had already done when reserve officers took part in the January 2023 demonstrations against the government’s anti-democratic justice plan, marches that lasted ten months until the 7 October massacres, when 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas paramilitaries…
On 10 June 2025, the Financial times writes: in recent weeks something has changed.
Major Israeli media channels are showing, albeit in short clips, the toll of lives in Gaza. Some politicians are questioning whether Israel is still fighting a just war. And on the sidelines of the hostage demonstrations, anti-war activists are keeping vigil for the dead in Palestine. Their numbers have grown from a handful to hundreds, and on Saturday they marched with candles and pictures of dead children in a silent procession
Below: a post from Haaretz against the war in Gaza that in summary says ‘how can you sell sweets inciting destruction in Gaza when Palestinian children don’t even have a biscuit?’
But the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, on 22 July 2025, in the Corriere della Sera, denounces ‘the moral abyss’ into which his country has plunged:
“There are days when the sincere hope that the hostages will return quickly sustains us, others less so. There are days when soldiers die, others not. There are days when it seems the government is about to fall, others when it seems it will continue to harass us forever. But one thing remains constant: every day for the past four months, a double- or triple-digit number of Palestinians have died in Gaza: on our happiest Israeli days, on our saddest Israeli days, while we cried over a dead soldier and while we laughed over a TV show, while we left for Greece and while we were stuck at the airport unable to return because of the war, when the draft card arrived and when we caught the flu. Every one of those days, less than two hours away from home, children, men and women died, and their deaths were called ‘collateral damage'”.
“Every night, as we closed our eyes, not far away people we did not know stopped breathing. Whole families. (…) This death does not move mountains, it does not receive news attention in Israel, it is not present, almost not reported, but it is continuous, arbitrary, devastating and purposeless. The ever-growing mass of Gazawi corpses punctuates, like a metronome, the depleting time of hostages, the future announcements of fallen Israeli soldiers, but above all it stands there to remind us what a moral abyss we have fallen into. An abyss where the death of tens, hundreds of human beings has become routine‘.
Below : a woman’s grief at the killing of a loved one at the Al Tina distribution point in the south of the Gaza Strip (Afp)
