Julie E. Cooper in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
IN THE DAYS following Hamas’s brutal massacre on October 7, the atmosphere in Tel Aviv was tense and somber. As if seized by a collective depression, residents wandered around zombielike, unsure whether and how to conduct mundane transactions. Sirens blared periodically, warning us to take shelter from incoming missiles. While huddled in shelters and stairwells waiting for the “boom” that signals a missile interception, people scrolled frantically on their phones. Social media networks were inundated with macabre video clips—captured by the perpetrators’ body cameras—from the carnage on the southern border. In our stairwell, neighbors seemed evenly divided between those who could not look away from the gruesome images of murder, arson, kidnapping, rape, and mutilation, and those who—whether to honor the victims’ violated dignity or to shield themselves from the horror—refused to look.
More here.