How is your work-war balance today? Confusion, disorientation, and possible transformations in times of bewilderment.

How is your work-war balance, asks a colleague a November morning. She asks those of us displaced in the south of Gaza, sheltering in a school, after witnessing the destruction of our homes, universities, and cities. She asks those of us positioned in a part of the world that observes in bewildered silence. Since the Hamas attack in Israel on 7 October, where 1200 people were killed and 240 hostages taken, the Israeli military has launched an assault in the Gaza Strip and established a complete siege on all borders. By April 2024, more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed, including 13,8000 children, and more than 76,500 injured. The present work – comprising a multi-voice discussion between Italian and Gazan academics – reflects on the difficult question of how to survive in such a catastrophic and bewildering context. How can those who have been confronted for seven months with scenarios of death and the absence of any human rights, in a liminal space between life and death, psychically survive? How do those who are here live, scrolling on Instagram between pictures of blood on a flour sack and pictures of bathing in the Maldives? How do we live with feelings of guilt and shame at the precariousness of the values on which we had built the certainty of our foundations, ‘as members of the most advanced human civilization’? This work reflects on possible paths of survival in the face of this bewildering. Thinking about Gaza also means confronting one’s helplessness, anger, and responsibility, necessary steps in thinking about Einstein's question and wondering how we can approach a future where all can experience justice and peace. We reflect on the healing process that can take place within the encounter with the other, in the group, to counteract loneliness, and to construct sense and thoughts. Holding hands in the landscapes of mourning to restore the resources of tenderness and regain trust. Just as the wake is a community event, we need to experience communal mourning to recognize the trauma and the actions necessary to prevent its recurrence.