After the destruction of Gaza, Ariel Beery kept encountering the same argument: that what Israel had done proved the Zionist project was finished. He didn't believe it, and had trouble explaining why because his objection was instinctual, emotional, reflexive. So he did what he does when he can't yet explain how he feels: he spoke with others.

Being Israeli After the Destruction of Gaza is the record of those conversations. Over three months in early 2026, Beery sat with Israelis he trusted — peacebuilders, journalists, academics, and civil society leaders who had spent the year before October 7th opposing the Netanyahu government and didn't stop protesting after. He asked each of them the same question: How does it feel to be Israeli after the destruction of Gaza?

The people he spoke with are not the ones featured by the media. They are not government officials or the voices of the Israeli extreme right. They are liberals, democrats, citizens who found themselves, after the war, holding a position the rest of the world has struggled to even name: horrified by what their country did, accepting of their responsibility for it, and unwilling, despite all of that, to walk away. In a discourse that has demanded people choose a side — defend Israel or reject it — they refused both options. And they continued to fight for what they believed in.

For the many Jews around the world who have been searching for a way to hold the same position — unable to accept the Israeli government's conduct, unwilling to accept that the answer is abandonment — this book offers something that has been almost impossible to find: other people who understand. A language for what they actually believe. A model for what it looks like to stay and rebuild.

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