Notes from the middle: The impossible task of writing about Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war | Canada Voices

The concept sprung from a conversation somewhere along the murky, jagged road that had shot out so unexpectedly on Oct. 7, 2023. This sudden path was heavy with the detritus of war, the ever-increasing deaths of Palestinians, the continued plight of hostages, the bombardment and destruction of Gaza, the worldwide horror and a global rise in antisemitism. We were making our way in the dark – we still are – when during a conversation (not trolling posts over social media, but an actual discussion at a table), my book editor had an idea.

What about publishing a collection of the columns I had been writing about Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war for this newspaper, along with some new, contextual writing, as a sort of historical document: a contemporaneous look at what that first year was like, through the eyes of a Jewish person in the diaspora who was horrified by … everything?

This was the summer of 2024.

We began work on it. I reread everything I had written, added contextual and historical details, included some previous writing I had done about Jewish identity, and wrote introductions, postscripts and footnotes.

With a publication date of August, 2025, I was somewhat confident – or at least hopeful, even with hope in such short supply – that October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle would be published into a different environment. I thought the war would be over; I thought the columns would be in retrospect.

Never did I think that things would still be this bad – continued Israeli air strikes on Gaza; starving Palestinians, including so many children; hostages remaining in captivity, one of whom had to dig his own grave on video; Israeli plans to expand the military incursion; talk of removing Palestinians from Gaza; Israeli bombs targeting journalists; global antisemitism climbing to ever-higher levels. Benjamin Netanyahu still in power; his far-right Finance Minister talking about expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank – a plan he declared “buries” the idea of a Palestinian state. Gaza in pieces; Israelis marching in the streets; and Donald Trump of all people weighing in with his ludicrous proposals.

A book looking at this from the middle? The humanitarian middle?

What does that even mean?

At some point along this road, weighed down by sorrow, disgust, anger and betrayal, I began to think of myself as being in the middle: not geographically, of course. I was safe, in Canada, in the diaspora, on the periphery.

My middle is ideological.

Where I believe in the state of Israel’s right to exist, which makes me what has become a common slur in this heightened time: a Zionist. Where I despise what the current Israeli government is doing in Gaza. Where I mourn the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans and the destruction of their homes and lives. The starvation, the displacement, the unalterable destruction of Gazan lives. And I detest Hamas, which seems to care less about these people than about its mission to “obliterate” Israel, as its charter calls for. Where I mourn for the victims of Oct. 7, 2023, and fear for those hostages who still, after nearly two years, remain in hell. Where I want the war to end, the bombing to stop, the hostages sent home, the journalists safe. The occupation of Palestinian territory to end and the rebuilding of Gaza to begin – under Palestinian rule that is not Hamas.

Where I am allowed to mourn the killings of two little Israeli red-haired brothers without being accused of being a genocidal Nazi.

Where I am somehow still shocked by the rise of antisemitism. And suddenly keenly aware of a psychological term I did not previously know: traumatic invalidation – the experience of having your trauma dismissed, politicized or denied altogether. “Rather than being met with compassion and care, many were instead met with a stunning mix of silence, blaming, excluding and even outright denying the atrocities of October 7 along with any emotional pain stemming from them,” notes a study about the Jewish community co-authored by U.S. psychologist Miri Bar-Halpern (she is coming to Toronto to speak about this next month).

The discourse has sunk to rock bottom. When I published an obituary for a Vancouver Holocaust survivor – a kind, gentle man who had survived the war as a child – one of the online comments called the piece “pro-genocide propaganda.”

A Vancouver therapist e-mailed me, mocking me for complaining about antisemitism in Canada, given what’s going on in Gaza. Would anyone (therapist or otherwise) dare write that to a member of any other ethnic minority group? Stop complaining; the racism your people are experiencing isn’t valid. Would they even think it?

Rereading the columns took me back to the beginning of this calamitous journey, especially to those first, shocking days. On Oct. 7, 2023, I had forgotten about a scheduled Saturday morning phone call with an old friend. She was slightly annoyed initially. She wasn’t having the day I was: immersed, stunned and mournful, constantly monitoring my phone, checking in with family over there. Fearful. This was the first hint of a cleavage in the world that would become very pronounced very quickly: those of us who were personally affected, even peripherally, and the rest, who could be horrified from more of a distance. There were more and deeper divisions to come, of course. Not just between “sides” but also within communities, including progressive and Jewish communities. These rifts became too deep and ugly for some friendships to survive.

The consequences of this war will reverberate through generations. I am someone who suffers from intergenerational trauma resulting from a different horrendous war. I fear for the future, the life-altering anxiety that will be inherited by so many, including those not yet born. But I am enveloped in fear for the present. I fear the actions and decisions of Netanyahu and his fanatical cronies. I fear the actions of Hamas, Hezbollah and others who fight for the annihilation of Israel. I fear the consequences of it all, for us all.

And I feel lost, here in the middle. Stuck. But safe, I know. Lucky me. That I get to continue, to stumble my way down this rocky path.

October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle will be published Aug. 19.