Shallow

When the World You Believed In Begins to Lose Its Soul

An intensely personal reflection on humanity, justice, love, loyalty and the fear of losing faith in the one country I have always considered home.

For the first time in my life, I am not looking forward to visiting Israel. Writing those words feels almost like a betrayal of everything I have believed in, everything I have fought for and everything I have dedicated so much of my life to. In December, I am supposed to return to the country that has always occupied a special place in my heart, the country I have defended relentlessly, sometimes at considerable personal cost, and yet, instead of excitement, I feel something I hardly recognize. Fear. Disappointment. Exhaustion. Perhaps even disillusionment. And the most disturbing part is that I am not entirely sure where these feelings come from. Perhaps Israel has changed. Perhaps humanity has changed. Or perhaps I have finally reached the point where I can no longer ignore what I have been witnessing for years.

Perhaps I am simply fed up with humanity.

I have always been a person with an almost unbearable sense of justice. In my family, I am known for being relentless, extremely stubborn, energetic and sometimes impossible to convince otherwise once I believe something is fundamentally wrong. I cannot watch injustice unfold and simply turn my head. I cannot pretend not to see what is happening because acknowledging it might make my life uncomfortable. I have never possessed that convenient ability to look away, and although I once considered this one of my greatest strengths, I increasingly wonder whether it has also become one of my greatest burdens.

When it comes to Israel, I have spent years behaving like Don Quixote, charging into battles on social media, in public discussions and sometimes literally in the streets, confronting narratives, challenging antisemitism and defending a country that means far more to me than a geographical location on a map. I started long before standing up for Israel became fashionable in certain circles, long before people discovered that advocacy could bring attention, recognition, followers and sometimes even financial opportunities.

I remember how people, including Jewish people in the Netherlands, told me that what I was doing was useless, that I was only stirring things up, that speaking openly about antisemitism would make matters worse. Their preferred strategy seemed remarkably similar to that of an ostrich burying its head in the sand, convinced that danger disappears when you refuse to acknowledge its existence. But then antisemitism became impossible to ignore, when hatred reached their own streets, their own communities and their own lives, and suddenly everyone needed to take action.

Suddenly, people who had once discouraged confrontation presented themselves as visionaries. New organizations appeared, new voices demanded attention, and initiatives that had been working tirelessly for years were pushed aside as though they had never existed. Instead of joining forces, sharing knowledge and strengthening one another, too many people seemed determined to become the face of the struggle.

Shallow.

That is the word that increasingly comes to mind when I observe human behavior.

Vanity is one of the characteristics I dislike most about humanity, particularly when it disguises itself as morality, compassion or dedication to a noble cause. In the world of advocacy, where cooperation should be essential, I have witnessed people compete for recognition as though defending Israel were a contest in which only one person could claim victory. Some appear more interested in becoming famous than in making a difference, more concerned with the number of followers they attract than with the substance of their message, and more enthusiastic about opportunities for personal advancement than about the sacrifices genuine commitment sometimes requires.

I cannot help wondering how many would continue if the applause disappeared. How many would remain if there were no likes, no invitations, no recognition, no financial rewards and no prestigious connections? How many would continue standing up if doing so meant losing friends, relationships, professional opportunities, income and social acceptance?

Because that is what commitment has sometimes meant to me.

Standing up for something you believe in when it benefits you is relatively easy. Standing up when it costs you something is an entirely different matter. And although I do not question that many people are genuinely committed, I have become increasingly suspicious of those whose principles seem to grow stronger in direct proportion to the attention they receive.

When conviction becomes a career opportunity and morality becomes a personal marketing strategy, something essential has been lost.

Shallow.

But can we really blame humanity for becoming what it is?

That question brings me to another subject that has caused countless discussions throughout my life. Religion.

I have often found myself debating with religious people, particularly Christians, who confidently assure me that God is good, that everything happens for a reason and that humanity must trust in divine wisdom. I know these beliefs provide comfort to millions of people, and I respect their right to believe them, but I cannot accept them without asking questions.

If God is so good, why do children die before they have even begun to live? Why do babies suffer? Why are loving husbands, wives, mothers and fathers taken away from families who desperately need them? Why are innocent people subjected to unimaginable cruelty while those responsible sometimes live long, comfortable lives?

And how do we reconcile the claim of divine goodness with the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, the very people described in several religious traditions as God’s chosen people?

When I ask these questions, the answer is often that humanity, not God, is responsible for evil.

But that answer raises an even more uncomfortable question.

If God is infinitely wise, infinitely powerful and infinitely good, why would such a being create a species capable of extraordinary cruelty, hatred, greed and destruction? Why create humanity knowing what humanity would become?

Perhaps God does not exist, at least not in the human form or conscious personality that religions so often describe. Perhaps what people call God is something entirely different, an energy, a force, something beyond our understanding. I do not pretend to know. But I find it intellectually unsatisfying when people use divine goodness to explain everything beautiful while placing responsibility for everything terrible entirely upon humanity.

To me, using faith as a convenient explanation for questions we do not wish to confront can become another form of superficiality.

Another form of shallowness.

And then there is love.

Perhaps the most beautiful human emotion, and at the same time one of the most painfully misused words in our vocabulary.

I have never understood how people can speak so easily about love while treating another person’s heart as something temporary, something available when needed and disposable when circumstances change. When I love someone, whether through friendship, admiration or something far more intimate, I do not calculate what I might gain. I give my heart, my loyalty, my attention and my energy because that is what love means to me. I do not know how to love halfway, how to offer affection only when convenient or how to make someone feel important one moment and invisible the next.

Unfortunately, I have discovered that not everyone understands love in the same way.

Some people are remarkably skilled at making another person feel special while carefully ensuring that this person never becomes an inconvenient part of their actual life. They welcome your warmth, admire your strength, enjoy your affection and draw energy from your presence, but only within the boundaries that suit them. They allow you close enough to feel a connection, yet never close enough to become a genuine part of their world.

And when life becomes complicated, when responsibilities demand attention or when your presence no longer fits comfortably into the picture they have created for themselves, something changes.

The warmth becomes distance. The attention becomes silence. The person who once made you feel extraordinary suddenly behaves as though your existence has become an inconvenience.

You are expected to understand, to remain patient, to respect circumstances, to accept limitations and, above all, never to demand the same consideration you so willingly gave.

You become a beautiful secret, perhaps even a cherished memory, but never someone who is allowed to stand openly in the light.

And the cruelest part is that the affection may not even have been entirely false. Perhaps there was genuine admiration, genuine tenderness and genuine connection. But what is the value of those feelings when they exist only under conditions determined by one person?

Love that welcomes you in private but cannot acknowledge your place in someone’s life is not the kind of love I believe in.

I have no desire to become a convenient chapter in someone else’s story, something to be opened when life allows and quietly closed when reality becomes demanding. I refuse to believe that loyalty should mean accepting invisibility, or that understanding another person’s circumstances requires abandoning respect for yourself.

There is something profoundly painful about discovering that the depth of your feelings was welcomed, but the responsibility that should accompany them was not.

Shallow.

Perhaps that explains why I increasingly prefer animals to human beings. Animals do not pretend to possess moral superiority. They do not build reputations around compassion while secretly calculating personal advantages. Their affection is not wrapped in elaborate explanations, social expectations or convenient excuses. They simply respond to the world as they experience it.

Human beings, on the other hand, have developed an extraordinary talent for making selfishness sound reasonable.

And that brings me back to Israel.

Israel has always represented something fundamentally different to me. Not because I ever believed Israelis were perfect, because they certainly are not, but because I admired something that seemed to survive despite their disagreements, their arguments, their political divisions and their extraordinary diversity.

The Israeli spirit.

That fierce, almost indescribable determination to protect a homeland, a people and a legacy stretching back thousands of years. The conviction that Jewish history is not merely something preserved in books or museums, but something alive, something worth defending and something that generations have paid an unimaginable price to preserve.

I admired the patriotism, the resilience and the extraordinary ability of Israelis to argue fiercely among themselves while still recognizing that the survival of their country was a responsibility they shared.

I have witnessed that spirit. I have felt it. It is one of the reasons Israel became so deeply embedded in my identity, even though my life took me elsewhere.

Israel was never just another country to me.

It represented belonging.

It represented courage.

It represented the refusal of a people to disappear.

But when I look at Israel today, I sometimes struggle to recognize the spirit I admired so profoundly. I see political hostility that seems to have replaced disagreement with contempt. I see Israelis fighting one another in the streets, political leaders mocking their opponents and public figures competing for attention while the country faces threats that should demand an extraordinary degree of national responsibility.

I see opportunities for unity disappearing into endless arguments about personalities, political loyalties and ideological differences. I see people who seem more determined to defeat their fellow Israelis than to confront the dangers facing their country.

Of course, disagreement is an essential part of democracy, and I would never wish to see Israel become a country where criticism is silenced or political opposition disappears. But there is an enormous difference between passionate democratic debate and allowing hatred of one another to become stronger than the shared determination to protect the nation itself.

Perhaps I am judging too much from a distance. Perhaps the Israel I see through the media and social networks is not the Israel I will encounter when I arrive. Perhaps the loudest voices have simply drowned out the quiet majority who continue working, helping, protecting and caring for one another without demanding recognition.

I desperately hope that is true.

Because what frightens me is not the possibility that Israel has become politically divided. Israel has always been divided in one way or another. What frightens me is the possibility that the division has begun to erode something far more precious.

The soul of the nation.

The understanding that beneath every political disagreement lies a shared responsibility for the survival of the Jewish homeland.

The realization that the sacrifices of previous generations deserve something greater than personal ambition, political vanity and public humiliation.

The conviction that some things must remain more important than winning an argument.

From a distance, I sometimes fear that Israel, the country I believed had preserved something extraordinary in an increasingly superficial world, is also being pulled into the same shallow universe that seems to dominate so much of modern humanity.

A universe where appearance matters more than substance, popularity more than integrity, convenience more than loyalty and personal recognition more than collective responsibility.

And perhaps that is why I am so afraid of returning in December.

Not because I fear for my physical safety. I have never allowed that to determine my love for Israel. Not because I expect perfection, because I know perfectly well that Israel has never been perfect.

I am afraid of something much more personal.

I am afraid of discovering that the Israel I carry in my heart no longer exists in the way I remember it.

I am afraid that the extraordinary spirit I admired as a child, that I rediscovered during later visits and that has sustained my commitment throughout years of advocacy, may have become another casualty of human vanity, selfishness and division.

I am afraid that I have spent so much of my life defending values that the people I admire may no longer consider equally important.

And perhaps, somewhere beneath all these fears, lies an even more uncomfortable realization.

Maybe I am not only afraid of being disappointed by Israel.

Maybe I am afraid of being disappointed again by the very idea of belonging.

Because there is a particular kind of exhaustion that develops when you repeatedly give everything you have, whether to a cause, a country, a friendship or a person, and discover that your commitment does not necessarily guarantee a place in return.

You can be appreciated without being included. Admired without being valued. Needed without being chosen. Welcomed when your presence brings comfort, but quietly pushed aside when your existence requires effort, courage or responsibility.

And eventually you begin to wonder whether the problem lies in expecting too much from others or in living in a world where expecting genuine loyalty has somehow become unreasonable.

I do not believe loyalty should be conditional upon convenience. I do not believe love should disappear when circumstances become difficult. I do not believe principles should change according to public approval, and I certainly do not believe that defending a country should become an exercise in personal glorification.

Perhaps that makes me stubborn. Perhaps naive. Perhaps hopelessly idealistic.

So be it.

I would rather remain someone who believes too deeply than become someone who feels nothing beyond the surface.

And despite everything I have written, despite my disappointment, my anger and my exhaustion, I know that my love for Israel has not disappeared. It is precisely because that love remains so profound that the possibility of disillusionment frightens me.

Indifference would be easier. Indifference would allow me to visit Israel as a tourist, admire the scenery, enjoy the food, meet a few people and return home without asking difficult questions.

But Israel has never been a holiday destination to me.

It has always been part of who I am.

And that is why this coming December feels different.

I am not merely preparing to travel to a country I love. I am preparing to confront the possibility that some of the things I believed were unshakable may have changed, and that the sense of belonging I have carried for most of my life may be more fragile than I ever wanted to admit.

Perhaps I will discover that my fears were unfounded. Perhaps I will encounter the same warmth, courage, generosity and extraordinary national spirit that made me fall in love with Israel in the first place. Perhaps I will be reminded that the true character of a nation is not defined by its loudest politicians, its most ambitious public figures or the bitterness displayed on social media, but by ordinary people who continue living their values without seeking applause.

I hope so.

I need to believe that beneath the noise, the vanity and the endless competition, something genuine still survives.

Because I can accept that people disagree. I can accept that people make mistakes. I can even accept that people sometimes fail to live up to the principles they claim to defend.

What I find increasingly difficult to accept is the ease with which people treat loyalty, affection, conviction and human dignity as disposable commodities.

I do not want to live in a world where everything meaningful exists only for as long as it is convenient.

Where people are loved only when they ask for nothing.

Where principles matter only when they attract applause.

Where patriotism becomes a performance.

Where friendship becomes a transaction.

Where commitment is welcomed but never reciprocated.

Where those who give their hearts are expected to remain grateful for whatever fragments of attention they receive.

That is not the world I believe in, and it is certainly not the world I want Israel to become.

I am not afraid of discovering that Israel is imperfect. I have always known that. I am terrified of discovering that the spirit I loved so deeply has become as shallow as the world around it.

And perhaps the most painful question of all is whether I am still searching for the Israel I once knew, or for something I have been searching for throughout my entire life.

A place where loyalty is not a weakness.

Where love is not a convenience.

Where courage does not require an audience.

Where belonging does not depend on what you can offer.

Where people stand beside you not only when you are useful, admired or easy to love, but also when life becomes complicated.

A place where depth still matters.

Because ultimately, whether we are speaking about a country, a cause, a friendship or love, the principle is exactly the same.

If you only stand beside someone when it is convenient, you were never truly standing beside them.

And if everything we claim to believe in disappears the moment it demands something from us, perhaps we never believed in it as deeply as we pretended.

That, to me, is the tragedy of our increasingly shallow world.

And for the first time in my life, I am genuinely terrified that the place I have always considered home might no longer offer an escape from it.

I hope December proves me wrong.

I have never wanted so desperately to be wrong.