Six months after Hamas attack: “One asks oneself: What are we fighting for?”

Even six months later, Hamas’ terrorist attack remains an “endless present,” says author Ofer Waldman. Added to this is the fear for the hostages, war atrocities – and the failure of the government. This threatens to drag Israel into the abyss.

tagesschau.de: When we talked about the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th six months ago, you described it as a “breakdown of civilization” and a “collapse” of your world. How do you look at this day and its consequences today?

Ofer Waldman: That still applies. I also used the term “new era” back then. People often talk about a “before” and an “after” when it comes to such events. The “before” is only vaguely remembered, and there is no “after” yet. There is a quote from Natan Sznaider who says, “We go to bed on October 7th and wake up on October 7th.”

There is this endless present of October 7th, embodied primarily by the Israeli hostages. And then there is the horror of the war, which has now lasted for an unimaginable six months, with death and hunger. This is all part of the collapse of civilization that has come to all people in this region.

The fate of the hostages is omnipresent

tagesschau.de: What characterizes this “endless present” for you?

Waldman: It is the fate of the hostages, their pictures hang everywhere. Their families’ protests are becoming increasingly desperate. New details are also emerging about the kidnapping and what happened to the hostages after the kidnapping. By this I mean the acts of sexual violence against the hostages that occurred not only on October 7th, but also afterwards. This thought is always present.

In addition, Israel is shelled daily from Lebanon. Fighter planes continue to thunder across the sky day and night. This includes constantly waiting for the flight alarm – does it come, doesn’t it come? If I had lived 40 kilometers north of my home in Haifa, I would be telling you about my life as an evacuee. More than 100,000 people have become internally displaced in Israel. That too is part of war.

And gradually the immeasurable horror in Gaza unfolds. The images of this are also part of the cruelty of these days – coupled with the obvious failure of politics to lead us out of this situation.

“We are slowly getting up again, on shaky legs”

tagesschau.de: Six months ago you reported how it was impossible and yet essential to talk to your children about this collapse of their world. How do you and your children deal with it now?

Waldman: I can now see, after six months, how, especially with my older daughter, the details of October 7th and the period thereafter are entering her thoughts and dreams. In any case, it is a generation that almost only knows the state of emergency due to the corona pandemic and the political chaos in Israel. It is important to seek open conversation, address your fears and let them be expressed, including when it comes to the topic of sexual violence. And then to say: We are slowly getting up again, on shaky legs.

Because that is also part of the dramaturgy of standing up: I have taken my daughter with me to Jewish-Arab demonstrations and vigils in the past few weeks to show her that it is up to us to do something when it comes to whether the world is ours Trust deserved or not.

I tell her: “Choose a poster that you can identify with, hold it up. And if you do this together with Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, then you show that you are not powerless. And you are actively working that this damn world deserves your trust again.”

“Freeing the hostages becomes a political issue”

tagesschau.de: Do you have the impression that the government is doing enough to free more or all of the hostages?

Waldman: Many people are asking this question, not just the relatives of the hostages – they are asking whether or not freeing the hostages is the most important war goal for this government. It’s terrible because it turns the whole thing into a political issue. The fact that freeing the hostages as a top priority is not part of the political consensus in Israel shocks their families and large parts of Israeli society, and also me.

This also applies to the international conversation about it: there are babies, old people, abused women among the hostages: does it even matter that they are Israelis? Shouldn’t the demand for their release be part of the international consensus, regardless of their nationality?

It is an ordeal and a trauma. The hostages, the war, the danger of the war spreading: Israeli society has shown in the past how much strength it has. How this test of strength will be passed remains an open question. At the same time, one has to say: It was Hamas that triggered the war. It is Hamas that is holding the hostages, it is Hamas that is interested in causing a conflagration in the region.

“The old cracks are opening again”

tagesschau.de: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while sticking to his course, repeatedly emphasizes Israel’s cohesion. Can you still recognize him?

Waldman: In the first few weeks after the Hamas terrorist attack, we still experienced strong solidarity. Now, six months later, the old cracks that have rocked Israeli society over the past year are reopening. Now these cracks are, so to speak, doused with the fire, the suffering and the blood of war and are therefore becoming more painful.

One asks oneself: What are we fighting for? Is Israel fighting a defensive war? Is Israel fighting to free the hostages? Is Israel fighting so that October 7th can never, ever be repeated? Or, as parts of the current government suggest, is Israel struggling to achieve certain messianic goals – namely the settlement of the Gaza Strip, the transformation of the geopolitical reality in Israel and Palestine?

That is why we are now in a phase as a society in which many are taking to the streets again because we see that the war has become an entity in its own right that is apparently more powerful than any political actor in Israel. On both sides we see actors – I don’t want to make pointless comparisons – who want to make their messianic delusions come true in the shadow of war. We see that this war threatens to finally push Israel, which was already on the brink of the abyss before October 7 because of its government, into the abyss.

There were mass demonstrations in Jerusalem against the government, for the release of the hostages and for new elections for three days in a row. But these are not demonstrations where you shout, they are demonstrations where you cry with the relatives of the hostages. What they say there is heartbreaking. And this discharge of frustration and anger now heralds a new phase after the outbreak of war in which Israeli society is currently finding itself.

“We’re talking about hunger”

tagesschau.de: The Israeli government is facing massive international criticism for its conduct of war in the Gaza Strip, including from its closest ally, the USA. Do you understand that?

Waldman: This criticism raises the question of what we are fighting for. We have a government that is incapable of formulating clear war aims, that refuses to talk about the day after. We are talking about more than 30,000 victims in Gaza, the majority of them civilians. We see untold suffering and absolute devastation. We’re talking about hunger. Children are starving 140 kilometers from my house! Saying this sentence is beyond imagination.

Unfortunately, you hardly see any pictures from Gaza in Israel. You need to consume specific media to know what is happening in Gaza. On the Palestinian or Arab side, where you mainly watch Al Jazeera and similar channels, people question October 7th whether it even happened that way.

And so we have two groups of people who do not acknowledge the other’s suffering at all, do not perceive it at all. That’s why many Israelis find the international criticism to be hypocritical. Now the death of the seven international aid workers has shaken things up a bit and made the Israelis understand how cheap human life is in the Gaza Strip.

“Realities that we thought were past”

tagesschau.de: Does this lack of understanding also include the fact that in the international debate about solidarity and its limits, forms of anti-Semitism that were believed to have been overcome also appeared in Germany?

Waldman: The new book by Sasha Marianna Salzmann and me is called “Simultaneous,” and it also means that Jewish people around the world, whether in Israel or elsewhere, were suddenly confronted with images and realities that we actually thought were past. This also includes this wave of anti-Semitism that we saw worldwide after October 7th.

I have always seen myself as part of a humanist camp and now I had to see that many actors in this camp denied Israeli victims their human rights and their suffering. Many international organizations, which always uphold universal human rights, took a long time to talk about sexual violence crimes because the victims of these crimes were Jewish women.

The deprivation of human rights, indeed of humanity, due to the collective affiliation of the victims, even the inability to see people beyond collective affiliation: This is a terrible reality of this war. It does not only occur among Israelis or Palestinians, but also among many observers of the war.

At the same time, we saw an enormous wave of solidarity in Germany and not only in Germany, which was very important for many Israelis, including me. This is crucial when their world is in ruins, when they are thrown out of the world through experiences of violence.

Write – and see the suffering of others

tagesschau.de: Can it still be possible to maintain or regain courage and confidence under these circumstances?

Waldman: For me, writing makes it possible to perceive the world and myself in it again, especially through friendship, through my counterpart in the book, Sasha Marianna Salzmann. It showed me: I am not powerless, I can make a difference, work on a shared narrative of our world.

But if I demand that my suffering, my anger and sadness be seen, it is part of it that I also notice the anger and sadness and suffering of the supposed other side. And I demand the same from my Palestinian friends, as well as from everyone who speaks out about the war.

I am rightly asked to see the suffering in Gaza. I demand that of myself. If I fail to see the suffering in Gaza, I have no right to insist on a shared world, nor to insist on being seen as part of it.

Only when we regain this common narrative of our world can we perhaps imagine the beginning of a healing from this human catastrophe.

The conversation led Eckart Aretztagesschau.de