October 2023 turned the distant into the near: Israel and Gaza became entangled in each other. What had been remote, its existence repressed, pushed beyond the pales of darkness and of reality and imagination, suddenly crossed the border, breached the fence, was present inside, in the very interior of the country, and became inevitably close.

What is the meaning of this proximity? What does it have to do with actual battle, future battle, face-to-face battle, or the brutal and deadly battles that have been ongoing for the better part of an entire year? Does digital media bring the war closer or distance it from us? And in what sense is it possible to think of the Israel-Gaza war as a battle between kinsfolk, blood relations? And what kind of critique of a war close by – that is intimate with it, internal to it – is possible in the thick of it?