R worries about the future in Israel before the election - considers moving to Germany

R is concerned. The Israeli election is just over a month away and she sees it as absolutely decisive for her future. If "Bibi", as she calls Benjamin Netanyahu, wins again, she doesn't think she can stay.

Maybe she can move in with her daughter, who recently changed their small suburb outside Tel Aviv for Berlin? First, the daughter divorced, which I didn't know about, and R launches into a long exposition about what hell it was to get the rabbi to let the daughter get a divorce. Endless conversations, endless questions, not only about the couple in question, but about R herself and her background.

I remember when R's daughter was getting married - it was an unbearable process for R even then, as she is secular and has never been married. In Israel, secular marriages are not allowed, which means that many go abroad if they want to avoid interfering with religion in their lives. Or they have zoom weddings with American officiants, a loophole in Israeli law that the current right-wing coalition government has vowed to close.

- Now she at least understands that I was right when I said that she should stop getting involved with the religious, says R.

"In Germany, my language and my people are nothing but child killers"

I reply that the daughter might find a German husband next. R really hopes not, she says. She doesn't like Berlin.

- The last time I visited her, I was sitting in a cafe and talking on the phone in Hebrew. Then a man my own age came up and started yelling at me about being a child killer and genocidal and everything you can think of.

R is one of the biggest opponents of Israel's war in Gaza that I know. She is oppositional, pro-Palestinian and would probably be described as a traitor by the current government.

- But in Germany, my language and my people are nothing but child killers. I can't bear to debate with them, it's just the way it is.

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