Authors from Israel and Gaza: Writing with Trauma
The consequences of Hamas terror and the Gaza War are a topic of discussion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, even after the ceasefire. How are Israelis and Palestinians dealing with them?
Atef Abu Saif can barely hide his outrage. The Israeli army, the Palestinian writer tells DW, has destroyed not just homes, but an entire culture. Through writing, he wants to save what can still be saved. But what can be saved when only rubble and ashes remain? All that remains, says Abu Saif, are memories, only the descriptions of himself and other authors.
Atef Abu Saif is one of the best-known Palestinian writers, probably also because he was Minister of Culture in the Palestinian Authority and spokesman for the Fatah Party in Ramallah from 2019 to 2024. He was born in Jabaliya in the north of the Gaza Strip , a former refugee camp. He and his family traveled to his political office moved to the West Bank .
But on October 7, 2023 , the day Hamas fighters entered Israel in a terrorist attack, killing or taking hundreds of civilians hostage, Atef Abu Saif was visiting the Gaza Strip with his son. And unlike in previous wars, when the Israeli attacks began, this time he feared deeply for his youngest son's life and his own.
Only after almost three months, in which he witnessed suffering and destruction, family members killed, and himself injured, was he allowed to leave the Gaza Strip with his son. He published a book about this time last year: "Don't Look Left: Diary of a Genocide," a document of horror, and also one with which he seeks to reassure himself. Since leaving the Gaza Strip, Abu Saif has been staying in various places. "I don't live," he says, "I exist." But as a writer, he feels a duty to bear witness. To tell the stories of all the victims who would otherwise be forgotten.
"It's not over yet"German journalist and author Sarah Levy lives near Tel Aviv . The Jewish woman feels obligated to continue writing and demonstrating against a government she accuses of trying to make "the country less democratic." In Frankfurt, Levy presented her new book, "No Other Country: Notes from Israel," in which she describes how the country has changed since October 7, 2023, and under the Netanyahu government .
Sarah Levy emigrated from Germany to Israel in 2019. She is married to an Israeli and the mother of a three-year-old son who has lived more than half his life in war. The nightly bombings regularly roused him from his sleep.
But Sarah Levy always compares her family's situation with that of the people in the Gaza Strip, seeing their suffering and their deaths. And realizes that she's pretty much alone in this: "I had quite a few liberal, Jewish friends who became radicalized and dehumanized the Palestinians." Since its founding, Israel's very existence has been threatened – this has led to a prevailing attitude among many: "I don't want to hear about the suffering of others." Now there's a ceasefire, and the surviving hostages are back in Israel. "Peace is also the desire to stop hating," says Levy, "and I fear we're still a long way from that."
The year of Mahmoud Muna's birth was the year his father opened the "Educational Bookshop" in East Jerusalem, which now includes two additional stores. These are now run by Mahmoud and his family. The bookstores specialize in Palestinian culture and history, Jerusalem, and the Middle East conflict.
These are books that sometimes reveal uncomfortable truths; that's intentional. Mahmoud Muna absolutely wants people to question narratives, to educate themselves about history, but also to be inspired to imagine a new, different future. "Where there are books, there is peace," his father always said. Mahmoud Muna adds: "Our bookstores are places where people can still meet.
Muna is famous as the "Bookseller of Jerusalem," and it caused an international stir when Israeli police raided two of his bookstores in February 2025 and detained him and a nephew. They were released after two nights, and the charge of incitement to terrorism was dropped. Does this worry him? Muna doesn't want to talk about it any further; at the Frankfurt Book Fair panels, he prefers to talk about his vision of helping people better understand the world. He also talks about "Daybreak in Gaza: Stories about the Life and Culture of Palestine": It's a work in which he, together with other editors, lets more than 100 people from the Gaza Strip tell their stories – about life before and during the war. Stories from an everyday life in which there can occasionally be a glimmer of hope.
"The last two years have been terrible"
Sigalit Gelfand directs the "Israeli Institute for Hebrew Literature" in Tel Aviv, which has been using taxpayer funds to promote the translation of Israeli authors into other languages since 1962. She has a booth in one of the book fair's international exhibition halls and also organizes several events with Israeli authors. This year, the institute is also filling a gap, as not a single Israeli publisher came to Frankfurt in 2025. Because of the Gaza War , there had been international calls for publishers around the world to boycott the book fair because of Germany's policy toward Israel . However, only the Israelis stayed home.
The last two years, Gelfand says, have been terrible. The growing anti-Semitism worldwide, the exclusion from cultural events. A colleague was disinvited from a festival, and foreign publishers were reluctant to negotiate. But ultimately, it always helped to have direct, one-on-one conversations, to establish contacts, and to seek dialogue.
Perhaps the publication of one or two books will be postponed, but overall, Sigalit Gelfand is optimistic. Last month, she invited international publishers to talks in Tel Aviv. Twenty-five attended, which was celebrated with joy in the Israeli press. Now she hopes that the ceasefire will hold, that the hatred will end, and that something like normality can return.
That's probably what everyone, Palestinians and Israelis, wants. But there's still a long way to go.
dw
