On the occasion of the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, we spoke with Dinah Riese, co-director of the national news department of taz and Gil Shohat, director of the Israel office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Dinah and Gil reflected upon their personal experiences on October 7, 2023 and the time following. The topics included personal grief, anger, empathy and societal trauma, but also the question of how a future for Israelis and Palestinians can be shaped and what role commemoration can play in the present.
CPPD
To begin with, we would like to ask you both how you experienced October 7, 2023.
Gil
I was at home in Tel Aviv on October 7 and had just gotten back two days earlier from a trip to Northern Israel with my family. A relative of mine lives in a kibbutz there near the border with Lebanon, which has now been evacuated for a year. We began the day, like so many people in Israel, with a rocket alarm in the early morning. I always say that it was a situation in which the present, hardly classifiable, was continually outpaced by the news. On the one hand, there was reporting on the radio about the developing events. First of all, it was reported that there were rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip. Images circulated very quickly on social media of Hamas fighters attacking places inside of Israel and taking hostages. This overtook the ongoing reporting on the radio. We did not leave the house the entire day; there were multiple alarms in Tel Aviv. There was an eerie mood in the city. During this, there were battles that took place in southern Israel. I have two small children. It was also not easy to explain to them what was going on. For us, it was quickly clear that something had happened that had not happened before and that because of this we had to consider how to proceed as a family. On October 8, we decided that we wanted to leave Israel for a time. After this, everything seemed to take place in fast forward: packing, getting ready, putting the children to bed in the safe room we are fortunate to have in our apartment, explaining to them that we are going to leave soon – and why. In doing so, we still had things good in comparison to many others who didn’t have their own safe room and had to go to the closest one. All of this is still very present. It is hard to believe that this was already a year ago.
Dinah
I was in Berlin on October 7. I had readied myself for a very emotional weekend, but for very different reasons: October 7 was a Saturday and we placed Stolpersteine for my family on Friday. Accordingly, my family was in town to visit, also relatives from Israel. I woke up that morning and learned what had happened. I needed some time to understand that something different had happened from the usual – which is bizarre in and of itself: to think that this is now something that is different from the “normal” rocket fire. The morning passed with everyone on their phones writing to acquaintances, family and friends, trying to find out if they were okay. During this, we still didn’t know exactly what had happened. It was clear, however, that it had to be horrible. And that’s how this day proceeded. My family was staying in a hotel on Hermannplatz. Exactly where people handed out candies on the streets on the evening of October 7, celebrating the attack on Israel. The concert of car horns take place right in front of their window.
Like Gil, I also have two small children. On the one hand, we were in a state of shock; on the other, we had to take care of the children, who did not know what was happening. With Israeli family members at home, I had the feeling anyway that I had to create some space for them in this situation, since they were affected much more directly than I was. First of all, I simply took care of things. That there was enough food to eat on the table and things like that. That lasted for several days, until I basically had a nervous breakdown at work – that was the first time that no one was around me who needed me more urgently.
CPPD
Perhaps you could sketch out your memories of the following days. A polarization arose in Germany very quickly, which has intensified dramatically through the present day. Within social networks but also on the ground – in part also by people and groups who were active in recent years within the context of our work.
Dinah
In the first day or two after October 7, I watched in disbelief as some people seamlessly integrated this event into their narrative. The term “genocide” first popped up on October 8, before the war in Gaza had even begun. This narrative, which glorifies terror as resistance, was present immediately internationally on social media as well as with certain organizations and people in Germany. When I look back almost a year later, I find myself so naive. It is hard to believe that I thought at the time that a terrorist attack, a massacre, the atrocities of October 7 would make everyone pause for a moment.
There are a lot of queer feminist accounts in my feeds on social media, a lot of antiracist accounts. Accounts whose content I engage with both privately as well as professionally. It is nothing new that certain groups call for demonstrations, for example, on the anniversary of the Hanau attacks, with slogans like from Hanau to Gaza, Yallah Intifada. All the same, I thought that these people would also condemn something like October 7, not celebrate it as resistance or a lesson in the cause of liberation. I was mistaken. I was mistaken in believing that it was non-negotiable in queer feminist circle to condemn sexualized violence and to believe the victims, the women. The fact that people who moved in these circles labeled the massive and systemic sexualized violence on October 7 in the kibbutzim, on the Nova Festival and amongst the captives as “Zionist propaganda” – that literally took away the ground beneath my feet.
Gil
We traveled to Berlin on October 9. That was very emotional for me. Having to leave the country, which I found and still find to have been the right decision, primarily due to my family situation. Nevertheless, I felt like I was in a surreal world in Berlin: My head and heart were still in Tel Aviv and I first had to find my way in the new Berlin reality. The most important thing for me was to take of my colleagues, to ensure that they were doing well and remained responsive. Our team in Tel Aviv is a Jewish-Palestinian team. This means that we have colleagues who were indirectly affected by October 7, who lost friends or who knew people who lost friends. My Palestinian colleagues, instead, some of whom have families in Gaza, were worried about their relatives there. In these first days, it was very important that the leadership ask about these different needs, listen to them and take them into consideration. At the same time, there was a dissonance that arose from being in Israel in your heart and mind while being in Berlin geographically. The first days were marked by a sudden sense of being uprooted: for the children from the school and daycare context and for me from my work context.
Nine days after October 7, I wrote an essay with the title “Preserving Humanity”. In it, I described both the experiences I have just discussed as well as what had given me hope at that time. This was the ability of the people with whom I was working there – both the Jewish Israelis as well as the Palestinian citizens of Israel – the ability to see the grief and pain on all sides at this time and to provide the mutual empathy that is necessary at times like these.
I also asked myself the question of how all of this could have happened in the first place and what it could mean, as well as the question of what comes afterward? The aerial attacks on the Gaza Strip were already intense at this time and the inconceivable pain of October 7 was still fresh. Writing can also emphasize voices that do not distinguish between the suffering of one group or another. In my article, I quoted two of them and pointed out the radical, undivided humanity. I wrote about a “vortex of mutual dehumanization”. But also that there was hope. When I read the article from back then today, I still stand behind every word. It was an attempt to somehow render what had happened into words, to localize it. It was also a method for preserving hope and looking to the future. These were the most intense days that I can remember. They were crazy days, crazy weeks that still are not over.
Dinah
I think what you are saying is interesting, Gil. I have read many moving texts by a variety of authors in the past year. And even though writing is my primary means of earning money, I have not written a single text. I simply lacked the words. Now, on the first anniversary, I am writing my first text about October 7. I couldn’t do it before. I simply wasn’t capable of working in those first days. At first, I had to take a few days off. It was completely impossible for me to deal professionally with what was happening. Other colleagues did the exact opposite and threw themselves intensely into work concerning October 7 and its subsequent events. People have different strategies for coping. My decision back then was: I have a family at home that I have to take care of and I need all of my energy for that.
CPPD
We would like to hear your thoughts about an aspect of the mourning and processing work that scarcely received attention in the first days and has continued to be largely rejected: dealing with the hostages who were taken on October 7. Dinah, you have already mentioned the awful violence against women that has taken place in this context. It seems as though in Germany, the hostages quickly moved to the background of the contemplation and discourse. That could be different within the context of commemorating October 7.
Gil
I can remember the three months that we were in Germany. I had the impression there that the question of the hostages was always present. There were places in Berlin where posters of the hostages were hung up. It was constantly present for me because my job forced me to interface with Israeli media and I was in contact with our partners working there. I can’t properly say whether the question of the hostages was more present or less present for me than it was in Israel. My head was primarily in Tel Aviv during these three months anyway. The locations are very blurred for me. The question of the hostages is omnipresent in Israel. There are hardly any commercial breaks on public radio where the voices of the relatives of the hostages cannot be heard. And there are still more than 100 hostages that we do not know whether they are even still alive.
At the same time, the hostages do not receive much consideration on the political level. We can see that in the fact that they are not yet free. Accordingly, there is a dissonance. I have the impression that in the current debate there is, on the one hand, a permanent loop of reminding of the fact that there are hostages, but that, on the other hand, is not translated into an active dedication to their release. This dissonance between the lasting presence of the hostages, on the street or on television, on the radio, in conversation, at demonstrations on the one hand, and the simultaneous public inaction of the government in the sense of freeing them on the other, causes me to question the extent to which this permanent presence contributes at all to the mobilization of people for the liberation of the hostages. I have the impression that a great deal of the rhetoric that revolves around the Israeli hostages leads to passivity in society. This has changed, however, in recent months. The protests have gained strength once again. But this dissonance, how it came to be and what is behind it, troubles me.
CPPD
The initial visibility of posters that called attention to the hostages was quickly destroyed by the posters being removed or vandalized. This also led to the demand for the freeing of the hostages being quickly repressed in the German discourse, which drove the human dimension of October 7 and the war into the background.
Dinah
Gil, you mentioned at the end that we have seen the largest street protests in Israel that have ever existed in the country. It is precisely the families of the hostages and their supporters who have been unbelievably active for a year, both within the country and abroad. The fact that this civic action and remembrance has not been implemented politically in this country with this government is a big drama, but, unfortunately, not surprising.
Every time that I see a video of the parents of Hersh, I think: how remarkable are these people? What unbelievable people, what strength and what grandeur. They are able, in a remarkable way, to send to a humanist message that many people clearly need. Calling suffering suffering and seeing it as something that does not only take place on one side, if one wants to speak of “sides”, but instead recognizing that there is enough suffering for everyone in this world.
This brings me to the German debate. I am currently reading Gleichzeit (Real Time) by Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Ofer Waldmann. In it, they coined a term that expresses for me what we have talking about in the discourse here for so long: on and since. To summarize, I mean that we’re are neither talking exclusively about October 7 nor exclusively about the following war in Gaza.
What concerns me is the extent of the not only lacking solidarity or lacking empathy, but instead the active desolidarization in different directions. After six dead hostages were recovered on September 1, someone sprayed their names on a wall as graffiti to memorialize them. Someone else crossed out their names and wrote “Free Palestine” over them. This is not only a political demand to end the occupation, but instead also an abasement of the victims. There are also people who claim that every child in Gaza is already a terrorist and there is no civilian population in Gaza. This ultimately means nothing other than that these people are all deserving of the bombs, the suffering, the hunger and the illnesses. This is just as unbearable. Finding oneself in between these polar extremes and considering where the humanity has actually gone? I could name thousands of examples like this: in November, during the first ceasefire when the first hostages were exchanges for Palestinian prisoners was a moment of unbelievable relief, and not only for me. In social media, however, I encountered people who reacted to this relief with such contempt and were upset that everyone was showing photos of the freed hostages. “Why is no one celebrating the freed Palestinians?”, was one question that was posted. This person also did not share any photos of the released Palestinian prisoners and celebrate the fact; instead, they simply resented the joy of the others. Joy in the fact that women and children were released from being held hostage by a terrorist organization. When we talk about the German debate, a lot is said about virtue signaling. About elevating oneself morally.
One person floods social media with images of how they wrap their baby and their dachshund in a keffiyeh. Another shows themself standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate wrapped in an Israeli flag and calling for expatriation. None of them are contributing even to the slightest degree to the situation of the people on the ground improving. But that’s not what it’s about. In essence, it is about showing the world that one is on the “right side” – whichever side is supposed to be right.
That is also the tie to memorial culture: many people see references to memorial politics in their actions. In doing so, they say things like never again is now, never again for everyone or also what will you tell your children about which side you were on. This seems much more important than thinking about what one could do right now to save lives. Of course we cannot this war here from Germany. But instead of asking how one could contribute something productive, constructive to all of this horror, many people are concerned with how they themselves will be positioned in the future.
CPPD
Gil, how have you personally and professionally experienced the lack of solidarity after October 7, especially in terms of the institutional connections? Over the course of our work at Dialogue Perspectives and CPPD, we have seen that dialogue has become increasingly impossible – right up to the termination of cooperations and the withdrawal of partners. Despite our attempts to call for bilateral events and, for example, restore the dialogue between Jewish and Muslim communities, we are met with disinterest or refusals. Have you experienced this dynamic in your work with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation?
Gil
Within Israel, we work with civil society organizations and people from a wide variety of contexts. These are feminist groups, union initiatives or unions, Jewish-Palestinian initiatives, initiatives from a diverse range of minorities within Israeli society, refugees as well as projects within the Bedouin community in Israel.
We are positioned quite broadly with our projects that we promote and realize. Whenever I compare this with the developments in Germany, I am happy to be here in Israel. That may sound funny, but it was my express desire to return here with my family as soon as possible because I have the feeling that this lack of solidarity doesn’t occur here and, if it does, then very seldom. The organizations that we work with have all faced enormous challenges. October 7, the war in Gaza, the death of many Palestinians have of course led to crises in Jewish-Palestinian initiatives within Israel and beyond. Numerous organizations have not been able to continue their work for some time because they have need to collect themselves first. At the same time, it has quickly become clear to me politically that there is a foundation of solidary cohesion between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. And that it is not so easy to shake it. We have many examples in which we are supporting Jewish-Palestinian projects as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. One example is the so-called Peace Partnership, שותפות שלום. This initiative consists of over 40 societal institutions and organizations within Israel that have come together from the most disparate parts of Israeli society. From organizations for refugees to Mizrahi activists, from Bedouin organizations to Hadash, the leftwing political party. And all of them said: we have to stand together to end the situation and commit ourselves to obtaining a ceasefire and a hostage deal. We are also a part of things as a foundation and promote and support these initiatives because this is the only way to be able to look forward. Only the solidarity of Jewish Israelis with Palestinian Israelis, as well as vice versa, can lead to there being a future here. And this is why, when I hear everything that you are describing, this is the right place for me right now, in a certain sense. Because these questions are not at all superficial here, but instead have already long-since become part of political and activist everyday life. As a result, I cannot share these experiences as you describe them for my context here in Israel. I am happy about that and can say that I summon up a great deal of strength from the work here – and that we create a great deal of hope as an institution. After all, as long as there are these joint solidary struggles, there is also the possibility that things will change again for the better. In this very uncertain reality, there is something about solidary work, about cohesion, no matter whether amongst us in the office or with the people we collaborate with, that gives strength.
Dinah
It is asking a lot to have a great deal of empathy for everyone. And maybe that does not have to be. But the pragmatic recognition of the fact that the one thing is not possible without the other and that the one will get better without the other is extremely important. And that is also the core message of movements like Standing Together. To say that there will be neither freedom and equality for Palestinians without security for Israel nor that there will be security for Israel without the liberation of and equality for Palestinians. And the extent to which this work is not only not seen by some people but even despised, can be seen by the example of the call for boycotts against Standing Together by BDS. And this has happened even though BDS claims to advocate for the rights of Palestinians.
In Israel, people take to the streets to call for a hostage deal and a ceasefire. And even it is the case that they only do this because they know they will get the hostage deal through the ceasefire. People who take to the streets here for an end to the war and for the rights of Palestinians, however, I rarely see demanding a hostage deal. Clearly it is a no-go for some people to even mention the hostages. To recognize that they exist at all and that it is a disaster that they have been held hostage by a terrorist organization for eleven months.
In Germany, there is little withstanding of these simultaneities that I have spoken about. I really ask myself why we are not in the position to do so. For example, there is the group Palestinians and Jews for Peace in Cologne which has been active for months and has put on demonstrations. But this does not make its way into the discourse. That is also a problem.
CPPD
The contrast between the willingness for dialogue on the ground and the deep division of the discourse in Germany is conspicuous. Instead of empowering civil society, the war in Gaza and the commemoration of October 7 here has led to the destruction of civil society connections, which has caused significant collateral damage. One example of this is the lack of civil society engagement in the state parliamentary elections due to a lack of cooperation and mutual defamations. Gil, we’re interested in your assessment as a representative of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Israel: what questions are you asked in this political context? How do you evaluate the effects of the war on German civil society?
Gil
As a representative of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, I am asked a lot about the position of the party Die Linke, with whom we are affiliated, who, like the macrosocial leftists in Germany, have different access points to the situation in Israel and Palestine. Then I try to explain the situation. I always take care to bring together people from the party, from the Bundestag together with our partners here on the ground. The question about the position of Germany is asked less frequently. At the same time, the question is continuously asked in conversations with our partners, and this is independent of whether these are Jewish, Palestinian or other people who associate themselves with the left and who demand an end to the war, why Germany has stood behind Israel politically for so long. The questions are often interesting and refer to the developments in Germany. I also talk a lot about the macrosocial developments, the protests, the stressful antisemitism and about the simultaneous repressions against pro-Palestinian protests that take place completely independently, no matter whether laws are broken or not. At the same time, I have to say that the situation here is so acute that the time for such questions is limited. Many of the partners that we work with are suffering from increasing repression. This is police-based, state aggression, but these are also, of course, verbal attacks.
We are trying to bring people into conversation with people we work closely with in Germany, from political parties and from the field of foundations. At the same time, I am trying to present how the developments here are. After all, like I already said, the need is great but so is the necessity for international solidarity or for connections to progressive forces in Europe and elsewhere. I repeat that these forces that take to the streets here in Israel to demand an end to the war and are for Jewish-Palestinian solidarity and cohesion also serve the solidarity of the leftists in Europe and elsewhere. And, as we have already heard from you, Dinah, this unfortunately cannot always be taking for granted.
CPPD
In terms of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, we have realized that there is also an opportunity in commemorative space in an ongoing crisis, namely, to move toward conscious action. This is the withdrawal from reflection and especially from the proclamation of positions: there is an opportunity to live through remembering so that one acts specifically and with solidarity. I would be interested hearing both of your perspectives as to how you would like to see such acting shaped.
Dinah
What I find reasonable, important and overdue is that the people who are not affected emotionally or biographically remove themselves, take a few steps back and reflect. That they look and consider: how do we get out of this? I have much more understanding for people that are in this war and this nightmare, be they Israelis, Jewish, Palestinian, Muslim. Understanding that these people may have few resources to share reflected empathy in all directions in their pain, their anger and their grief. On the other hand, there are a large number of people who have the privilege that the on and since October 7 does not involve them.
A great deal has happened here and a great deal of it has been bad. Since Gil brought it up: the state’s answer to these in part unbearable and in part offensive antisemitic actions, demonstrations, things that have happened during the occupation of universities, is purely authoritarian. One does not deal with the roots of the antisemitic events and how one can handle them and encounter them, how one can bring about prevention. Instead things are banned, banned, banned. During the “Palestine Convention” in April, entry bans were imposed that were later annulled in court. This convention was absolutely unbearable, but it doesn’t help the matter either when an illegal entry ban is imposed. There is, on the one hand, an actual criminalization of protest and the articulation of Palestinian suffering. On the other hand, there is a romanticization of repression: people insist that the university occupations where Hamas symbols have been painted on the walls are peaceful because no one has been beaten into the hospital. As if the absence of physical violence means that something is peaceful. At the same time, this exuberant repression is very dangerous if we look at the condition of democracy and states under the rule of law. What is established in this situation as an exception can show up again in very different contexts next time. For minorities, regardless of whether they are racial, Muslim or Jewish, a state that acts in an authoritarian manner is always a danger. The ability to think in simultaneities is also missing there. To say: this protest is antisemitic and cannot be held. And then simultaneously to say that these police deployments where attorneys are arrested and journalists are beaten are just as untenable.
CPPD
In the context of memorial culture and the current political developments, a very important question is posed: how do we tell the story of our present, especially in light of the extreme polarization in politics and in society? In light of the state parliamentary elections in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, the trend seems to be pointing toward authoritarianism. In doing so, commemoration also plays a central role. In particular, the narrative of our present in its simultaneity can lead to new ways of thinking and also provide perspectives for acting for those who are uncertain of how they can act at all at the moment. How do you think, Gil, that we can move forward together?
Gil
I’m ambivalent with regards to memorial and memory and October 7. In Israel, we have the situation that there have been attempts on the part of the government to take possession of the commemoration of October 7, specifically on the basis of the question whether the state will hold a memorial ceremony for October 7. The government has decided in favor of this. This has, in turn, been met by angry protests by relatives of the victims as well as the hostages. They right say: this event is not over. Not until our loved ones come home. Not for as long as it remains unclear what has happened to them. On the other hand, in my opinion, there is legitimate criticism in the claim that the Israel government has used the horrors of October 7 in order to claim the war that has been raging in Gaza ever since as part of the struggle against Nazism or fascism. And this is, unfortunately, part of the rhetoric here: comparing Hamas with Nazis. In doing so, they say that we must conquer these Nazis today. And thus memorial political set pieces are taken and placed within a continuity that allows a course of action that leads to the mass killing of Palestinians. At the same time, I would not say that it would not be possible to reasonably commemorate this date in the future. I believe that a reasonable commemoration is a solidary commemoration. One which, on the one hand, places the commemoration of the victims on this day in the focus and which, on the other, does not ignore what has happened since. This can be a kind of solidary commemoration. And the success of this is strongly dependent upon how it is done. At the moment, I am having a hard time with commemoration because we are in the middle of a war, in the middle of the uncertainty regarding the further developments, in the middle of the fact that over one hundred people are being held hostage and that tens of thousands have died since October 7, and all of that also in light of the number of 1,200 dead in Israel on October 7. I keep having conversations with people who say that October 7 isn’t over, that they keep living it every day. And I do not have an answer to that which is satisfactory. Then I speak out of my own desperation. I spoke before about hope, I spoke before about perspective. I believe that we and many of the people that we work here with are now at the point where it is very difficult to maintain hope. This is because what has happened is not yet over on so many levels.
This conversation took place before the beginning of the war in Lebanon and Iran’s attacks on Israel.
