Even while vacationing abroad, Israelis can't escape the horrors of the Gaza war

I went to Greece for a weekend to see a new production of Aeschylus' "Oresteia" trilogy. In the open-air of ancient Delphi, the bloodcurdling deeds of Agamemnon at the end of the Trojan War were dredged up from the recesses of oblivion.

In the first hour, Agamenon was murdered. On the way to Troy, he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods and was disposed of by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the second hour Clytemnestra is murdered by her son Orestes, along with her lover, Aegisthus. And then, in the finale, Orestes seeks shelter, the goddesses of revenge haunting him like crazy. They infest the stage, blood streaming revoltingly from their eyelids. Like monsters in Pac-Man after the game ends.

And then something unexpected happened. From the heart of the audience, a loud cry suddenly burst forth: "Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!" For a moment I wasn't sure that this was what I was hearing – after all, what's the connection between a Greek play and the Palestinian struggle? But hundreds of people in the audience joined in the rhythmic chant: "Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!" The crowd was seized by ecstasy.

Outside the theater, there's nowhere to escape. Messages and graffiti in Hebrew on the walls of Athens are protesting the genocide in the Gaza Strip. Written below the price of coffee and lemonade on the whiteboard of a café is "Fuck Zionism." The whole country seems to be rising up against Israel.

Graffiti in Athens that reads "Every IDF soldier is a war criminal. Occupiers - rapists - murderers. We don't want you here."

There's something paradoxical about a vacation experience in the summer of 2025. We go abroad in order to escape the burdensome malaise, to flee the awful situation in Israel. Yet it's abroad that reality cries out from the walls – like horror that pursues us in a dream. The idyllic vacation dream morphs into a nightmare. It's impossible to escape into sleep.