Even While Vacationing Abroad, Israelis Can't Escape the Horrors of the Gaza War - Israel
I went to Greece for a weekend to see a new production of Aeschylus' "Oresteia" trilogy. In the open-air of ancient Delphi, the bloodcurdling deeds of Agamemnon at the end of the Trojan War were dredged up from the recesses of oblivion.
It was a sweltering evening. The seats were boiling hot, the actors crawled on their bellies across the stage for three and a half hours, whispering and rasping syllables in Greek.
In the first hour, Agamenon was murdered. On the way to Troy, he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods and was disposed of by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the second hour Clytemnestra is murdered by her son Orestes, along with her lover, Aegisthus. And then, in the finale, Orestes seeks shelter, the goddesses of revenge haunting him like crazy. They infest the stage, blood streaming revoltingly from their eyelids. Like monsters in Pac-Man after the game ends.
The time for taking bows arrived. The actors, half-naked and oozing artificial blood, stood up and bowed emotionally. The audience went wild, overwhelmed.
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And then something unexpected happened. From the heart of the audience, a loud cry suddenly burst forth: "Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!" For a moment I wasn't sure that this was what I was hearing – after all, what's the connection between a Greek play and the Palestinian struggle? But hundreds of people in the audience joined in the rhythmic chant: "Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!" The crowd was seized by ecstasy.
I slipped out, in a fright. Did they know there was an Israeli in the audience? Did they know I was there? No, that's not reasonable. Still, that display was aimed at me. The streaming blood seeped into my subconscious.
Greeks protesting the arrival of a cruise carrying Israeli tourists in Crete last month.Credit: Costas Metaxakis/AFP
Outside the theater, there's nowhere to escape. Messages and graffiti in Hebrew on the walls of Athens are protesting the genocide in the Gaza Strip. Written below the price of coffee and lemonade on the whiteboard of a café is "Fuck Zionism." The whole country seems to be rising up against Israel.
We, the Israelis, are the enemies of the human race. But there are moments it seems as if not only people are shouting – so are the trees, the pigeons, the scorched stones. The stain remains on the wall.
There's something paradoxical about a vacation experience in the summer of 2025. We go abroad in order to escape the burdensome malaise, to flee the awful situation in Israel. Yet it's abroad that reality cries out from the walls – like horror that pursues us in a dream. The idyllic vacation dream morphs into a nightmare. It's impossible to escape into sleep.
At the same time, leaving Israel makes it clear that in the central part of the country, especially in the domain, the war is felt less than almost anywhere else. Sure, there are demonstrations and there are posters of the hostages. But those little signs are swallowed up in the regular flow of work, shopping and dog-walking.
Graffiti in Athens that reads "Every IDF soldier is a war criminal. Occupiers - rapists - murderers. We don't want you here."Credit: Ofri Ilany
There are attempts to disrupt routine, the one that goes on as human beings are dying of hunger and thirst under the searing sun just a few tens of kilometers from here. At the end of last month, I stood on the Tel Aviv promenade with several hundred other people. We held up large photographs of Palestinian children who perished in Gaza. Here and there people cursed or spat. But after less than an hour, the protest dispersed. The seaside routine was restored.
Before that, I joined a group that was distributing leaflets in mailboxes, calling on reserve soldiers to refuse to commit war crimes. The messages I stuffed into the boxes read: "Don't become a wanted war criminal." A few hours later I went back to check and saw that the leaflets had disappeared. Not a trace of them remained; everything looked normal, completely normal. A drop in the ocean.
From this point of view, it's actually on a trip abroad that a peculiar type of a sense of reality is created. At long last we are being asked to account for our country's crimes. It's a grim feeling, destabilizing. But it's better to cope with it than to live with this dissonance – a situation in which everything looks supposedly normal, whereas in actuality nothing is normal. And if for that it's necessary to go to Greece on vacation – so be it.
Israeli activists demonstrating against the famine and war in Gaza, in Yad Mordechai near the Gaza border last week.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Mark of Cain
Some people try to argue, to explain that they are being unjustly accused – they actually are against the government; the picture is more complex. I prefer to accept the guilt. I can't stop the war, but nonetheless I am guilty. Guilty of belonging to a nation that is committing murder. The Israelis are committing a crime because they have become addicted to revenge. There's nothing exceptional about revenge; it's a natural human reaction. Natural, and at the same time criminal. Shedding blood is a loathsome act.
In the introduction to the Hebrew-language version of "Agamemnon," the first part of the "Oresteia," I read the explanations offered by the poet and translator Aharon Shabtai for Orestes' act of murder. "Orestes must take revenge according to the rules of the Erinyes – the goddesses of the blood feud. … But by virtue of the same rules, from the moment he committed the act he must be punished in the same measure."
"Clytemnestra hesitates before killing the sleeping Agamemnon," a painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Acts of gods possess excess gravitas. Every act of bloodshed, even if one comes up with 1,000 reasons for it, has violent consequences beyond one's conscious will. "Every act of revenge is simultaneously a new act of violence; like father begets son, murder begets murder," Shabtai writes.
This is what stands at the paradoxical foundation of our situation. I meet many Israelis who provide masterful explanations for why the war must continue. They're like those who explain why Agamemnon was duty-bound to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to the gods.
One can imagine a commentator of that sort, who would explain, rationally: "There is no choice, it was necessary to offer a sacrifice"; "You must understand, otherwise the Greeks' boats would not have been capable of going to sea"; "The Greek warriors were perishing on the boats"; "What would you suggest?"
If one's gaze is restricted to the situation that was created, it's possible that some of the explanations are logical. Here's what Israelis, who explain things in a serious tone of voice, sound like: "Hamas must be vanquished"; "They only need to surrender and return the hostages"; "In war, people are killed."
Israelis demonstrate the war in Gaza outside a branch of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem last month.Credit: Leo Correa/AP
At the same time, if one opts for a broader perspective, one sees the whole picture: Underlying the killing is revenge, and revenge is murderers' logic. Therefore, we are cursed.
There are base murderers, like Aegisthus, who are ready to commit murder in order to snatch more land. But there are also those of noble character, like Orestes, who are caught against their will in the gods' logic of "murder begets murder." What can we do, as individuals who cannot alter fate but are shackled by its murderous logic, which was determined even before we were born?
Escape is impossible. It's too late. Escape catapults us back into the horror of the crime. But like archaic heroes who shed blood, one can confess to the sin and ask for mercy. Cain, who shed his brother' blood, was branded with a mark, but the mark was intended also to protect him, so that he would not be killed.
It's the same with us.