Our World After October

In these last harrowing months, many of you have told Lilith you’re experiencing the events in Israel—and in Gaza—with labile emotions, caught in an awful kaleidoscope, whiplashed from shock at the unprecedented horrific attack on thousands of Israelis in kibbutzim and villages near Gaza to horror and revulsion as you learned of the premeditated brutality of rapes, mutilations, slaughter, incinerations and kidnappings. Then the chill and terror and grief as numbers were tallied, revealing how many hostages are held in Gaza; may they return home safely and soon. Then the near-daily reports of deaths in Gaza in the war that followed.

In these pages Israeli, American and Palestinian women speak their minds and their hearts after the initial attack on October 7 and in the weeks that have followed. Some will move you, others may anger you. All of them refract awful events through their own eyes. All these eyes are weeping, and we’re not adjudicating a competition of tears. The anger and the horror persist, and let us hope they can lead to better news and better government for all peoples of the region. May these women’s voices help move us to that place.

— Susan Weidman Schneider