It’s Friday night on Tel Aviv’s harbor promenade.
Humid sea air and the sound of crashing waves mix with the bass thumping out of Barby nightclub.
Tonight’s concert with Balkan Beatbox is packed with people. When the concert is over and the doors open, the concert-goers quickly disappear out of the venue and away.
Only a few are left on the promenade.
– It’s actually the first time in six months that I’ve gone to a concert. I just wanted life to feel normal again. But it’s not normal, says 22-year-old Shahar Zirkin Man to VG.
The impression left after this evening on the city is that the abnormal is the new norm in an Israel at war.
In the bar, VG meets someone with a gun in his waistband. Others have tranquilizers in their party bag.
Outside the concert venue in Tel Aviv, the young woman’s voice cracks. The big, brown eyes fill with tears.
– Actually, I’m just very sorry. I think about my friend, my ex-boyfriend. He died. He was in Gaza, and had a heart attack when he returned home.
Shahar gets a good hug from her mother, Dvora Zirkin Man (57), a straight-backed woman with wavy gray mane, who has joined her daughter at the concert this evening.
– I just wanted her to think about something else one evening, says the mother to VG, and quickly adds:
– But how can we? It’s so horrible, what’s going on.
Shahar’s ex-girlfriend was only 23 years old, the two say.
– This music and dancing only makes me sadder, because I think that he is not here – that he is missing out on all this, says the 22-year-old to VG.
More than 200 days have now passed since Israeli forces launched their major offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel in October.
Since then, over 34,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian area.
Many of the soldiers sent out of Israel to fight are young girls and boys, like Shahar’s ex-boyfriend.
604 people in the Israeli army and security services have been killed since October 7, 260 of them in ground operations in the Gaza Strip, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel lives under constant threats from the outside world.
Just over two weeks ago, many Israelis hid in bomb shelters when Iran carried out a rocket and drone attack on Israel.
A week later, the Israelis held their breath in suspense when they woke up to reports that Israel had carried out an attack on the nuclear power Iran. This despite clear admonitions from the country’s closest ally, the United States, not to escalate the situation further.
The partying Israelis VG meets this Friday evening in Tel Aviv say they are trying to get everyday going by keeping to the same routines as before. But along the streets of all of Israel’s major cities hang posters of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.
250 people were taken by Hamas back to Gaza. 110 hostages have since been released in a prisoner exchange, three have been rescued by Israeli forces, according to NTB.
129 of the hostages are still missing, and the majority of them are civilians.
Every single weekend there are heated demonstrations to put pressure on the Israeli government to bring the hostages home.
Every time Dvora and her daughter Shahar open social media, the faces of the hostages are there.
On Shahar’s Facebook page are photos of her with her ex-boyfriend, with the text:
“To me, you will always be the first boy I loved. I will continue my way in your way”.
– He should have been at this concert, says the young woman to VG.
At an outdoor bar a couple of kilometers from Barby, a large group of acquaintances between the ages of 25 and 50 are sitting. Friends of friends, we are told. Everyone who wants to is invited here.
– We go out to avoid being at home. To avoid being alone with our thoughts, Ran (49) tells VG.
He says he knows that Israel is more exposed than before, but that he is not afraid, because he “knows how to take care of his own security”.
VG notices that the man has a gun tucked into the waistband of his trousers. That civilians are armed in the street is not an unusual sight these days.
Ran’s girlfriend, half his age, breaks in. Daniella, 25, says she walks around in constant fear.
– October 7 shattered the idyll here. It destroyed so much. I had friends at Nova, friends who died!, she says with large hand gestures.
– Do you know what I have in my bag? Calming. Everyone here is walking around with such pills now, says Daniella to VG.
Daniella’s friend Danielle (34) says she has too much time to think. The videos of what happened on 7 October sit as if burned on the retina, she says.
– Now we feel that the hatred is so strong, as if the outside world sees us Jews as monsters, says the woman.
Asked what she thinks about all the civilian Palestinian lives being lost in Gaza, she looks wistful.
– It is difficult. Of course, I would like to see that no lives were lost. But it turns out that it was gullible of us to think that we could live side by side with our neighbours. It backfired on us. And we have nowhere else to go if we lose this country.
At the same time, she is ashamed of how the government in Israel behaves, she says.
– I am embarrassed by how Israel appears on the outside. Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir do not represent me. They mock Israel, says the 34-year-old.
There is a round of blank shots around the table. The waiter also swallows one.
– We don’t know how we’re going to figure this out, but somehow it has to work. We just want to live here in peace, says Danielle.
