Matti Friedman: Israel Had a Disorienting 2025. What Comes Next?
Some of Hamas’s hostages, who many feared would never return to Israel, are now at home and posting on Instagram. (All photos by Omer Barr)
As the world’s attention moves away from the Jewish State, its people are left to pick up the pieces.
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JERUSALEM — The other day, I was walking on a main street around the corner from the prime minister’s house in Jerusalem, as I do a few times a week, when I was struck by a sense of disorientation. Something was off.
It took a moment to realize what had changed. The sprawling hostage-protest tent that had become a local landmark, taking up most of this sidewalk for more than two years, staffed by activists and covered with the faces of the missing, had simply vanished. The pavement was swept clean, cars were passing by as usual, and it was as if the tent, and the cause it embodied, had never existed.
It felt like vertigo—and this, if I need to isolate a single emotion, is the feeling that defines Israel in 2025.
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