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Published: 16 January 2025
Last updated: 16 January 2025
During the outbreak of the Lebanon War last year, I was walking through Berlin-Schöneberg when I encountered an Israeli activist and academic who had also immigrated to Berlin. I asked her how she was coping. She responded, "I feel terrible. I can't face my Lebanese friends."
Standing out in the cold autumn air, I admitted to similar feelings. "I avoid the news. Every time I check it, I struggle to keep writing or working."
She gazed down, then back at me, saying, "We're lucky to have left Israel and settled here. I no longer feel connected to them (to the Israeli people)."
But are we really disconnected from our homeland? Is it that simple? After she left, I felt lost.
My wife has noticed that during past wars, I’d get angry and curse the Israeli government. But since the incursion into Lebanon, I just keep repeating, "There’s nothing I can do." I hadn’t even noticed this mantra, but now it feels stuck in my throat.
What do we do with feelings of helplessness, alienation, and shame? How do we process the grief, anger, and betrayal? Watching from afar as the place where we were born descends into endless violence, we are caught in a vortex of emotions.
My back aches with the weight of these moral questions, as if my body is manifesting the emotional weight of my mixed feelings about Israel.
The day I met my friend, September 23 2024, at least 558 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli attacks, including 50 children and 94 women. Over 1,800 were injured, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Israeli officials justify these actions as necessary to bring back the 60,000 residents of northern Israel who fled after Hezbollah threats. But I wonder if Israel exhaused its diplomatic options.
I feel conflicted. I don’t want to dismiss solidarity with Israelis under threat from Iran, Hamas, or Hezbollah. But how do Jews and Israelis in the diaspora face the Arab diaspora, knowing our country has caused such devastation? I crave a framework that includes the lives of all those affected—Palestinians, Lebanese, Israelis.
My back aches with the weight of these moral questions, as if my body is manifesting the emotional weight of my mixed feelings about Israel. I feel disgust and shame over the sharp transformation in Israeli society—a barrier, perhaps a "wall," has grown between them and me. This wall feels permanent, yet I fantasize about breaking it down.
As Iran escalates its proxy wars with Israel, I reflect on the relationship between contemporary Jewish life in the diaspora and the version of Judaism Israel projects to the world. Is this the moment to redefine Jewish identity?
When I was 14, I saw massive tanks rolling along Haifa’s coastal road toward Lebanon. It was the start of a new war, and the sight was surreal. My beloved view of the Mediterranean was replaced by ominous steel machines. Soon after, my father was called to the reserves. My mother was terrified. I was terrified.
After the failed PLO assassination attempt on Israel’s ambassador in London in June 1982, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon seized the moment to justify a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. Suddenly, our lives were upended. We were cleaning out bomb shelters, darting in and out between air raid sirens. I remember playing outside only to have my mother yell, "Are you mad? Get back to the shelter!"
Over the eight years of war with Lebanon, my fear of the tanks transformed into something else: indoctrination. By the time I was drafted, I requested to serve in the Armored Corps. After training on the Merkava tank, I was deployed in 1990 to southern Lebanon, near Marjaayoun. There, I realized I was seen as a conqueror. Locals despised us. Our tanks were met with explosive devices. Once, during a night patrol, we mistook a line of wild pigs for Hezbollah fighters and fired at them. In the morning, we were mortified by our error.
Today, I feel a profound divide between Jews in Israel and those in the diaspora. The winds of incitement, racism, and extreme nationalism have eroded the moral compass of Israeli society. My back pain feels symbolic—a reminder of the collective trauma borne by those exiled, displaced, or otherwise uprooted.
Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis alike carry these invisible injuries. In the face of shared pain, we must find ways to heal together, not apart.
There is no perfect solution. I know some Israelis abroad hesitate to join pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Their fear is understandable.
But the need to resist the war, to engage in political activism, is growing stronger. That is why I attend war demonstrations organized by Israelis in Berlin. A small group of us—about 70 people—gather outside the foreign ministry weekly.
Do we change history? No. But our voices matter. Speaking out is a way of telling our children that we did something, however small, to oppose the violence.
This is how we begin to heal—by confronting the pain, by refusing to remain silent, by imagining a different future.
Mati Shemoelof is a poet and an author. His writing includes seven poetry books, plays, articles and fiction, which have won significant recognition and prizes. He has written a radio play for German radio WDR. A German edition of his bi-lingual poems was published by AphorismA Verlag.
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Comments2
AZ16 May at 07:48 pm
Shalom and salam. I’m a devout Muslim Arab who comes in peace and would like to say I appreciated your article because it was very human, real and different from most war-related discourse, which is a much-needed change.
You are certainly not alone in experiencing such conflicting emotions that come from war. Shame and pride, fear and anger, mercy and revenge, questioning our worldview and doubling down. We all ride this wartime cognitive dissonance emotional rollercoaster to varying degrees.
Viktor Frankl in his Holocaust memoir wrote “an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is a normal reaction.”
This certainly applies now as well for all of us – the amount of horrific footage and news we all see is highly abnormal for a human mind to handle. Unsurprisingly, we react in abnormal ways against our better rational judgment and even against our morality unfortunately.
We may disagree on many things but one thing that we share is virtually everyone on each side is an emotional wreck, traumatized and none of us are as super smart as we think we are otherwise we would have found a decent-ish solution decades ago to this nightmare.
None of us have all the answers, but I’d bet the start of the path to one is if there’s more mindsets like yours who focus first on the human experiences, psychological impact and emotional fallout of war rather than just the political element. If we understand that we are all humans who have the same human emotions and not an unfamiliar alien species, we can start getting somewhere I hope.
Michael Jaku19 January at 10:29 pm
Ironic he chose to make his home in Germany, of all places!