A Stranger in My Homeland is both a personal book and a national one. It weaves together Nir Avishai Cohen’s own experiences with the major events that have shaped Israel in recent years: the struggle over democracy and the protests against the judicial overhaul, the October 7 massacre, and the war that followed. It does so from the unique perspective of a human rights and peace activist who is also an IDF reserve combat officer, fighting for the right to voice his views in a society growing more radical and taking on fascist characteristics.
Nir’s experiences during these turbulent years, from his refusal to continue serving as a combat officer in the wake of the judicial overhaul, to the violence he endured at protests, to the political interrogation he underwent at a Shin Bet facility while serving in the reserves during the war, form a disturbing and thought-provoking portrait of Israeli society and the direction in which it is headed. This is the personal journey of an Israeli guided by ideology, the grandson of Holocaust survivors and the son of a deeply rooted farming family, who is driven by the reality of today’s Israel to feel like a stranger in his own homeland, so much so that he publicly refuses to continue serving in the IDF.
The book presents Nir’s worldview on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his views on the troubling processes unfolding in Israeli society and within the IDF, and his ideas about how a new era of peace might still be achieved, all while offering brave and incisive criticism of subjects that remain taboo for most Israelis. The story of Nir, one of the most prominent voices in the Israeli peace camp and in the struggle against the occupation, is not only a personal journey that is fascinating, eye-opening, and at times painful, but also an emotional one, the kind many readers around the world will recognize and respond to.
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