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.
