Since October 7, I’ve been living in a strange kind of no-man’s-land—not a physical place, but a state of mind. A limbo that feels like being stuck between two worlds, neither of which wants me. It’s a tough spot to be in, caught in the middle where both sides whisper (or shout), “You don’t belong here.”
In Israel, I’m viewed with suspicion and even hatred because I oppose the war. Most people around me say they don’t want war either, but they’re still fighting it, defending it, or rationalizing it as necessary. Meanwhile, outside Israel, the narrative flips. There, I’m seen as a colonizer by default, stripped of any victimhood, dismissed because of my nationality alone.
I’m too Israeli to be pitied, too resistant to be hailed as a patriot. It’s a kind of exile, even while I’m standing on what should be familiar ground—my home.
I’ve never shied away from speaking out against this war. From the beginning, I made my stance clear. I’m a theater director who has put on plays so politically charged that they can’t be performed in Israel. I even staged the English-language premiere of a play about the siege of Gaza. For years, I refused military service and have been vocal against the occupation.
But none of that seems to matter anymore. In the eyes of many, I am just Israeli—and that fact alone feels like a final verdict.
Not long ago, during a Shavuot dinner with extended family, the conversation took a sharp turn. A relative complained about Arab food-delivery drivers, saying, “These Arabs only know how to do two things with packages: steal them or blow them up.”
I called her out—said she sounded racist.
That set off a firestorm. The whole table erupted into a heated debate about the war, though everyone claimed to oppose it. Yet, one cousin was a combat medic, another was signing up to enlist.
“What are you even doing here?” the host snapped at me. “What right do you have to speak? You didn’t serve.”
My father tried to back me up, saying, “My son is a citizen. A pacifist. His views might be hard for me to hear, but I respect them. This is a democracy. He has the right to speak.”
The host shot back, “If this was your house, I’d get up and leave. But this is mine.”
Translation: You don’t belong. Leave.
The drive home from Jerusalem was silent, more than an hour of quiet tension. Not a word spoken between me, my mom, or dad. The silence held everything we didn’t have the words for.
A few days later, one of those same family members texted me something harsh: that with the views I hold, I should give up my Israeli citizenship.
It’s hard to judge him. He’s a father, too—a father of a soldier fighting in a war he doesn’t support. October 7 changed everything for him personally. His anger isn’t some abstract political stance. It’s raw, protective, and real.
About a week after that, I went to a concert in Tel Aviv with my dad. The band was called Ha’Ivriot—the Hebrew Women. They sang songs we both grew up with. The whole audience was singing along. I was too, until suddenly, in the middle of a verse, tears streamed down my face. I wondered: What will happen to this language? To this culture we’ve cherished and, somehow, managed to break?
Earlier this year, I attended a cultural leaders’ conference in Europe. Forty people from around the world gathered to dream about a shared future. I came in hopeful but left hollow.
Three participants never spoke to me or made eye contact once. My opposition to the war, my activism, my artistic background—it didn’t matter. Then, on the second-to-last day, one of them publicly said they felt psychologically unsafe because “the killer is in the room.”
I knew immediately they meant me.
What could I say? That I’m “one of the good ones”? There’s no phrase to soften someone’s judgment when they decide you’re beyond redemption. Any response only digs the hole deeper.
Soon after, I flew to Athens to help my girlfriend, who’s also Israeli, settle into her new life. She left Israel because she couldn’t live with what the country had become. I stayed with her for a while, trying to create some kind of rhythm in a new place.
A Greek friend who runs an NGO invited me to a picnic. I sat next to a young artist from Cairo, and we talked about art and Athens. I liked him. But when he asked where I lived, I said, “In between Israel and the U.S.”
Without a word, he stood up and walked away.
Later that evening, a Greek theater director told me, “I’m sorry, but I’m very upset by the situation in your country. By your genocide.”
I told him I was upset too. That my girlfriend left Israel because of it. That I have spoken out and stood against it.
He blinked, clearly thrown off. He didn’t know what to do with a person who didn’t fit his black-and-white view.
Every morning, walking the dog in her new neighborhood, I tried to feel normal. But graffiti covered the walls—some calling for a free Palestine, which I support wholeheartedly. But others stopped me cold:
“Save a life. Kill a Zionist.”
“When an Israeli asks for coffee, serve him a coffee”—next to a stencil of a scalding cup smashing a face.
Even the walls made up their minds. There was no space for someone like me.
I get the rage. The atrocities we see, livestreamed and relentless, make empathy almost impossible. When the world is full of such suffering, simple narratives feel like survival.
So I keep asking myself: Where does an Israeli pacifist belong?
My own family questions whether I should be in Israel because I criticize the military’s role in Gaza—the killing, the starvation. Abroad, a theater colleague once told me to “go back to where you came from,” claiming I don’t belong here but in the lands where my ancestors faced persecution and genocide.
Nuance has no value anymore in a world hooked on absolutes.
I’m not comparing my pain to others’. Palestinians are dying in Gaza. Israeli hostages remain captive. I carry those horrors daily, and they are far greater tragedies than mine.
But if we want a future that looks different, if we want peace, we need room to speak—from wherever we are, even from that uncomfortable middle ground.
When both home and abroad demand absolute loyalty over inquiry, purity over complexity, what space is left for someone who believes both Palestinians and Israelis deserve to live on this land?
When dissent is branded betrayal in one place and condemned as irredeemable in another, who’s allowed to imagine anything beyond endless war?
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