By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in The Jewish Independent

14 April 2026

My first trip to Israel was when I was eleven years old, my pre-bat mitzvah gift was a trip to a country that I already loved despite never having visited. More than twenty years later, I can still remember the texture of that visit: my first view of the Western Wall bathed in the soft late-afternoon light, vending machines stocked with kosher food,  climbing Masada and thinking about the people who had held out there under Roman siege and eating falafel that tasted fresher than anything I had ever eaten in Melbourne.

I fell in love with that version of Israel. Or more honestly, I fell in love with the way I experienced Israel at that age, uncomplicated, immersive, and entirely certain of its meaning.

I have been back to Israel many times since, usually for something significant, like my sister’s wedding or accompanying an Australian parliamentary delegation as a staffer. I am not Israeli; I am an Australian born Jew with a deep family history here. My family has been in Australia since the 1860s, and my mother’s ancestors are buried in the Jewish section of the Ballarat cemetery. And yet, when I arrive in Israel, there is a relief at not having to explain the basic contours of my Judaism. For once, I am not the ‘interesting Jew,’ as I am to so many of my non-Jewish friends and colleagues at home. I love being in a place that my religious practices require no translation, where kosher food can be assumed and where Shabbat is built into the structure of the week.

For a long time, I have found it easy to sit inside my dual identities. I am Australian, but I have a deep love of Israel. I speak Hebrew, I follow Israeli news, and I understand, at least in part, the national sensitivities that shape Israeli public life. Yet, despite this love, I do not want to move to Israel, and I feel culturally very Australian.

Yet, since October 7, my relationship to Israel has changed and I’m still trying to unpack exactly how I feel.

I have never expected conversations about Israel to be easy, but since October 7, criticism of Israel has become something I don’t really even know how to engage with anymore. People whose thinking I respect, whose analysis I rely on in other contexts, now speak about Israel in language that leaves almost no room for nuance, describing it as a genocidal state, as a uniquely illegitimate political project.

In the circles I move in, particularly among writers, journalists, and lawyers, there is a working assumption that Israel represents a kind of moral failure, something to be condemned rather than wrestled with. I find myself increasingly unsure how to enter these conversations. Anything I say feels either inadequate or misread, too critical or not critical enough, too emotional or not sufficiently detached.

To be clear, I am not talking here about the more ignorant or antisemitic commentary that has become so prevalent in recent years, nor the kinds of claims that reduce Israel to something its clearly not. What I am struggling with are the more nuanced critiques, coming from people who are informed and thoughtful, who are engaging with what is actually happening on the ground in Israel.

My difficulty is compounded by my own unease about the direction of Israeli politics. Figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich represent a version of Israel that feels more extreme than the one I grew up feeling connected to, one that sits against my values of equality and democracy that I was always taught were central to the Israel’s identity. The violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, particularly by “hilltop youth,” is so often met with limited or inconsistent consequences from police, a force now overseen by Ben-Gvir, which seems to signal a worrying direction for Israel. What troubles me most is the way violence has settled into Israeli political life and is no longer seen as aberrant.

I also abhor Israel’s recently passed death penalty. These laws specifically target Palestinians and exempt Jews, and risks entrenching a legal framework where the law is not applied equally. To me, this signals where things may be heading, a move towards a country that has a legal system that distinguishes on race rather than on a shared and consistent legal standard for all people. Is this law part of a broader Israeli shift? One that raises serious and at times confronting questions about the strength of Israel’s democratic institutions? I think so.

And yet, my connection to Israel is not objective. It is emotional, tangled up in the specific and the personal. My siblings live there and many of my closest friends from Australia have built their lives there. When I think about Israel, I am not only thinking about a state or a set of policies. I am thinking about people whose lives are directly shaped by what happens. I cannot emotionally detach, and I do not think I should have to, because for me Israel is bound up with Jewish history, with my identity as a Jewish, and with a sense of our people’s vulnerability.

Yom Ha’atzmaut this year arrives for me at a time where I no longer know how to talk about a country I fell in love with. I think about myself as an eleven-year-old standing at the Western Wall in the late afternoon light, certain of what she was seeing and what it meant. Yet I feel that the Israel I fell in love with and celebrated feels vastly different from the one I am watching today. I do not know if there is a way to fully reconcile my deep love for the country with my deep worry and concern about its direction.

In the end, when I think about Israel, I think about its people. My siblings, my friends and so many people I know and care about who live there. Whatever I feel about the direction of the country, I still love and care about Israel, and all the people who have to live with what it becomes.