Six months after October 7, a lament for the paths not chosen

JVL Introduction

Haggai Matar is a longstanding activist in Israel, and executive director of +972 Magazine, a joint Israeli/Palestinian project.

In a haunting essay he writes of the fear he lives with in Israel today, “the dread the follows me”.

It is a mixture of fear for “Israeli society itself: the people, culture, language, and human fabric that makes up life as I know it” and a “tremendous, truly paralyzing horror at what our country is doing in Gaza”.

He tries here to address those Israelis who say: “I have no place in my heart for the children of Gaza — I’m hurting too much for us.”…

In a bleak landscape he tries to explain to them the need for another way, one that “takes responsibility for the decades of disasters we have inflicted on the Palestinians”.

He has no illusions that it will come easily, but is clear that the alternatives are terrible…

RK

This article was originally published by +972 Magazine, in partnership with Local Call on Thu 18 Apr 2024. Read the original here.