When patience wears thin

Where Understanding Ends, Boundaries Shift, and Dialogue Loses Its Innocence

For more than thirty years, I have worked in civic education with a particular focus on Israeli-European dialogue. This work has always been more than a profession to me; it has been an essential expression of how I engage with the world. I have devoted much of my life to building bridges, creating spaces where people who might otherwise know each other only through media reports, flat stereotypes, or historically inherited prejudices can meet.

For decades, this work rested on a fundamental conviction: dialogue is almost always possible, provided both sides are willing to listen and acknowledge that another perspective exists.

I saw my primary task as making complexity both accessible and bearable. Reality rarely fits neatly into simple categories or convenient truths. I wanted Israel to be understood as more than just the Middle East conflict, just as I resisted reducing Europe strictly to the history of the Shoah and antisemitism.

In countless seminars, workshops, and panel discussions across Israel and Europe, I watched prejudices crumble when abstract images of the “other” encountered real human beings. That experience gave me confidence grounded in daily practice, sustaining me even through difficult periods.

My work was never about providing ready-made answers; it was about opening spaces for thought and debate. If participants left with more questions than they arrived with, I considered it a success. But this approach depends on something fundamental: a willingness to accept that one’s own perspective may be incomplete.

Today, I look back on some of those experiences with greater disillusionment. I see more clearly than ever how fragile these spaces of encounter have always been.

I never imagined I would say to a group dealing with strategies against antisemitism: “Before we talk about arguments and communication techniques, you need to ask yourselves a more fundamental question: Who do you still want to talk to—and who do you no longer want to talk to?” The participants fell silent.

It was neither a deliberate provocation nor a spontaneous outburst. It was the sober culmination of what I have experienced over the past few years. Because not every conversation deserves to be called a dialogue.

October 7, 2023, was a catastrophe for Israel and, for me personally, a shock that shattered many assumptions I had taken for granted. Yet what disturbed me almost as deeply was the reaction among segments of the Western public—at universities, in cultural institutions, and across social media. Instead of prompting empathy and solidarity, the deliberate violence against civilians was rapidly met with a swift reversal of the roles of victim and perpetrator. Even before the dead were laid to rest, the atrocities were already being forced into familiar political frameworks.

The suffering of civilians in Gaza is real and tragic; in my mind, there is no question about that. Criticism of the Israeli government and its conduct of the war is both legitimate and necessary. What I found deeply disturbing, however, was how quickly compassion for Israeli victims—the women who were raped, the children murdered, the hostages abducted—disappeared from the discourse or was treated as an inconvenient distraction.

Since 2023, my patience has been worn thin. I end discussions sooner than I once did. Sometimes I simply lack the energy—or the goodwill—to engage with absurd claims. Have I become overly sensitive? Or has public debate become so polarized that there is barely any room left for nuance?

Civic education in the Israeli-European context faces a fundamentally different landscape today. It is no longer simply about challenging prejudice; the immediate task is to establish whether a common basis for conversation exists at all.

In many discussions, I encounter an appetite for simple answers. Nuance is increasingly dismissed as evasiveness, or even a failure to take a stand. This makes educational work considerably harder. More and more often, I meet people whose worldviews appear impervious to counterarguments, corrections, or inconvenient facts. In such situations, I no longer insist on pursuing “constructive dialogue” at all costs. I have learned that using my energy responsibly means knowing when to walk away.

This shift has not been confined to my professional life; it has reshaped my private world as well. Friendships have ended because I could no longer tolerate a total lack of empathy for the reality in which I live. This applies to people in Europe who place responsibility for the conflict exclusively on Israel. But it applies just as much to Israelis whose political and religious values fundamentally contradict my understanding of democracy and a liberal society.

I am no longer willing to pretend that such profound differences can simply be brushed aside with a polite, “Let’s just not talk about politics.”

Contemporary political debate often feels like a vice squeezing nuanced thinking from both ends. At both extremes, simplified narratives dominate, leaving little room for questions, contradictions, or complexity.

On one side are those who force Israel into a rigid perpetrator-victim binary. At a conference in Berlin, I attended a panel dedicated to Palestinian perspectives—an important and legitimate subject in its own right. Yet demonstrably false claims were allowed to stand unchallenged, including assertions that Israel had never agreed to a two-state solution or that Hamas was created by Israel. At one point, a journalist in the audience stood up and thanked the speakers for finally “telling the truth.” The moment revealed just how distorted the discussion had become. She did not merely present misinformation as an act of courage; she went further, declaring: “In Germany, critical voices like these are normally silenced!” Once historical facts cease to matter and prejudice takes their place, the foundation for meaningful conversation evaporates. If historical context can simply be discarded, what remains is not an interpretation of reality, but a narrative constructed to satisfy a predetermined worldview.

This breakdown of boundaries is not confined to panel discussions; it increasingly spills into historical spaces that demand our highest respect. At the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial—a place where my own father was imprisoned—a visitor wearing a T-shirt featuring a Palestinian terrorist sparked heated debate when staff chose to de-escalate and proceed with the tour rather than intervene immediately.

This incident highlights a core dilemma in memorial education: Should staff prioritize open dialogue and conflict prevention, or must they enforce strict moral boundaries to protect the dignity of Holocaust remembrance? When memorial spaces hesitate to draw clear lines against provocations that glorify terror, can dialogue maintain any moral grounding?

Yet the opposite extreme is no more constructive: the reflexive, unquestioning defense of every decision made by an Israeli government. This form of unconditional solidarity leaves no space for critical scrutiny of state policy. In its own way, it fuels polarization just as much as the sweeping rejection of Israel from the left. Anyone who genuinely cares about Israel cannot ignore what is happening within the country. Democratic institutions are under severe pressure, and the tone of public discourse has become harsh and aggressive. Those who criticize government policy are quickly branded as disloyal or “enemies from within.” In some cases, verbal hostility has escalated into intimidation and physical violence against journalists and peaceful demonstrators calling for democratic standards or the release of the hostages. Remaining silent about this internal crisis does not protect Israel. On the contrary, it undermines those inside the country fighting for democracy and the rule of law.

A particularly sensitive issue concerns debates within Jewish communities in the Diaspora—whether in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, or New York. Time and again, I encounter voices demanding that Israel act with uncompromising force—calling for maximum military pressure, solutions without concessions, and no room for diplomatic compromise. What strikes me is how detached such demands are from the actual lives of those who bear their consequences. It is easy to demand toughness when neither you nor your children are expected to pay the price. It is not your sons and daughters serving in Gaza or along Israel’s northern border. It is not your family running to bomb shelters when sirens wail.

I find this brand of “love for Israel” irresponsible. It ignores the profound human burdens carried by the people who actually live here. If our discussions are to remain honest, that difference must be named.

In European debates, I frequently encounter two recurring attitudes that stand in the way of genuine understanding: On one hand, those who lecture Israel from a comfortable distance, passing judgement without ever having experienced the existential threats facing the Jewish state. On the other hand, those who demand maximum military escalation from that same safe distance, while bearing none of the costs.

These positions appear to be opposites, but they share the same fatal flaw: both treat this conflict as an abstract model or a stage on which to perform their own moral righteousness.

Those who have lived in peace in Europe for decades can easily come to regard violent conflicts as mere misunderstandings that could be resolved if only there were enough goodwill, dialogue, and skillful mediation. But reality is not always so accommodating. The desire for peace must never be confused with peace itself. Peace is not self-sustaining. It requires rules that are respected, boundaries that are defended, and actors willing to uphold them. After 1945, Europe built institutions designed to resolve conflicts through negotiation, international law, and compromise. This is a great political achievement. But it has also fostered the illusion that every conflict everywhere can be solved using the same blueprint.

Was the Israeli-European dialogue of past decades pointless? No. But I have become acutely aware of its limits. Facts and logical arguments can only reach those who are willing to question their own assumptions. Where that willingness is absent, even the most compelling arguments fall on deaf ears.I will continue my work in civic education, but I do so through a different lens. Dialogue is not an end in itself. It loses its integrity when it merely serves to cover over fundamental moral conflicts or lends legitimacy to dangerous falsehoods.

I accept that my patience has worn thin. I no longer fight against that reality, nor do I feel guilty about it. There are situations in which drawing boundaries matters far more than maintaining “dialogue.”  Nor do I measure success by whether I manage to convince my counterpart. Sometimes, success is simply creating a temporary space where people genuinely listen to one another and prove capable of sitting with complexity.

Where that willingness still exists, the effort will always be worthwhile.