Ruptured

I expected that I would find Ruptured difficult to read; and I did. I've been increasingly aware that, despite always being fascinated by and sympathetic to Judaism, at the moment I exist inside a decided pro-Palestinian bubble. One of my daughters is determinedly pro-Palestinian, to the point where, to me, she's become uncomfortably anti-Israel. I can't defend the actions of the state of Israel in Gaza, but I wanted a clearer understanding of why Israel has been behaving that way.

Australia is a small world. I didn't expect to find essays in here from an ex-housemate and from my former school captain. I also had to remind myself that this book was published before the Bondi shooting of December 2025; I can only imagine how much the deep anguish and fear expressed in these essays has intensified since then. One thing that became immediately obvious that that although I myself find it simple to separate the nation state of Israel and its actions from the Jewish people, these Australian Jewish women experienced no such easy distance. For them, Israel and being Jewish are inextricably intertwined, so that criticisms of Israel's action are felt directly as anti-Semitism. It's much more personal than I'd realised. Any critique of Israel is felt as a denial of Israel's right to existence. Also, the events of October 7, when Hamas attacked and murdered Jewish citizens, was such a violation, so painful, that no amount of bloodshed in Gaza seemed to touch it; there was no comparison, no equivalence. (I'm aware that my words are clumsy and indeed I'm struggling to clearly express the emotions that rose so painfully from these pages.)

I'm not sure that I really found the clearer understanding that I was seeking from Ruptured, but I'm much more aware of the genuine suffering that these women have endured and are still enduring, and the mutual incomprehension that seems to lie between the Jewish community and the pro-Palestinian protesters (I'm talking about peaceful marchers like my daughter, obviously not the terrorists who have firebombed schools and synagogues, and definitely not the Bondi shooters.) It's all such a horrible, agonising tangle, and I don't know how it can ever be smoothed out so everyone can live in peace together. Here and now, it seems impossible, even in my city here on the other side of the world.