Palestinian writer Atef Abu Saif could hardly hide his outrage. The military had destroyed not just buildings, but an entire culture, he told DW. He wants to use the medium of writing to save whatever is still salvageable. But what can you save in a war-torn wasteland? All that remains are memories, the author says.
Saif is among the best-known Palestinian writers, his reputation derived in part from the fact that he served as the Palestinian Authority’s Minister for Culture from 2019 to 2024, and as a spokesman of the Fatah party in Ramallah. He was born in Jabalia, a refugee camp dating back to 1948 and located in the northern . Along with his family, he later moved to the West Bank because of the political office he held.
On October 7, 2023, the day fighters made their armed incursion into Israel, kidnapping hundreds and killing over a thousand civilians, Saif was visiting the Gaza Strip with his son. Unlike in previous wars, he was gripped by fear for the life of his youngest son, and his own, when this latest conflict broke out.
Only after nearly three months of suffering and destruction, while enduring the loss of family members killed in the attacks and being injured himself, was he finally able to leave the Gaza Strip with his son. He published a book about his experiences last year, entitled “Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide.”
The work documents the horrors of the Gaza war, and writing the book also helped him regain a sense of self. Since leaving the Gaza Strip, the author has been frequently changing locations.
“I don’t live,” he says. “I exist.” As a writer, however, he feels an obligation to recount the events as they transpired.
‘No longer wanting to hate’
The German journalist and Sarah Levy lives near Tel Aviv. She sees it as her duty to keep writing and to protest against an administration she accuses of aiming to make “the country less democratic.”
In Frankfurt, Levy presented her new book, entitled “Kein anderes Land. Aufzeichnungen aus Israel” (No Other Land — Notes from Israel), which describes how the country has changed under Prime Minister Netanyahu since October 7, 2023.
Emigrating from Germany to Israel in 2019, Levy, who is , is married to an Israeli and has a three-year-old son who has spent half his life in war. The night time bombardments regularly woke him from his sleep.
At the same time, Sarah Levy always compares her family’s situation with what Gazans are going through — and refuses to turn a blind eye to the suffering and death.
Yet she notices that few around her share her mindset. “I had quite a few liberal, Jewish friends who became radicalized and dehumanized Palestinians,” she says. She attributes this attitude to the perception that Israel’s since the country’s founding.
A shaky in Gaza has come into effect, and the remaining living hostages have been returned to Israel. “Peace also means no longer wanting to hate,” Levy says, before adding that she fears “we’re still a far cry from that point.”
Books provide peace
Mahmoud Muna was born the same year his father opened the “Educational Bookshop” in East Jerusalem, which now has two further shops. Mahmoud and his family run them. The bookstores are specialized in and history, , and the Middle East conflict.
The books also sometimes tell inconvenient truths. Muna wants people to question the narrative, to learn about history, and to be inspired to envision a different future.
“Where there are books, there is a peaceful place,” his father would always say. “[Our bookshops are] one of the places where people still can meet,” he says.
Muna is famously known as the “bookseller of Jerusalem,” so it caused a stir internationally when the Israeli police searched two of his bookshops and detained him and his nephew in February 2025. The two were released after two nights in custody, and the accusations of incitement and support for terrorism were dropped.
When asked whether the incident worries him, Muna said he would rather not talk about it. Instead, he used the panels at the Frankfurt Book Fair to share his vision of helping others and better understanding the world. He also spoke about “Daybreak in Gaza: 4000 Years of a Place and its People.” In this book, he and other publishers let over 100 people from the Gaza Strip tell their stories — of life and war: stories from day-to-day life where a sliver of hope sometimes remains.
Israeli author fears exclusion
Sigalit Gelfand runs the “Israeli Institute for Hebrew Literature,” which is publicly funded and has aimed to promote the translation of works by Israeli authors into other languages since its founding in 1962.
She had a booth in one of the international exhibition halls of the book fair, and also organized events with Israeli authors. This helped fill a gap, because in 2025 not a single publishing house from Israel came to Frankfurt.
In light of the ongoing Gaza war, there were calls for publishers to the event on account of Germany’s stance on Israel. In the end, only the Israelis stayed home.
The last two years have been horrible, says Gelfand, with on the rise and the experience of being excluded from cultural events. A colleague‘s invitation to a festival was cancelled, and foreign publishers have been very cautious in negotiations. But at the end of the day, she says, personal conversations, as well as contacting and reaching out to people directly, have always helped.
Gelfand is confident that things will be better in the future, even if the publication date for some of her books might be postponed.
Last month, she invited international publishers to Tel Aviv for talks. 25 publishers came, which was picked up by the Israeli media as a huge success. Now, she hopes that the will hold, and that the hate will end. And that somehow, things can get back to normal.
A wish that is probably shared by everyone — Palestinians and Israelis alike. But there might still be a long way ahead until it can become a reality.
This article was originally written in German.
The post Writing with trauma: Israeli and Palestinian authors speak out appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
