Motherhood, War, and Moral Indifference

This project examines how parenting young children shapes the moral orientations of Jewish-Israeli women toward war, in the context of the Israel–Hamas war. Launched immediately after the outbreak of the war, when other research activities were suspended, the project explores how caregiving responsibility, maternal vulnerability, and the constant imperative to protect young children reshape moral reasoning, political positions, and emotional responses to violence, including experiences of moral confusion and even indifference toward the suffering of the other side.

The project began as a feminist autoethnography grounded in my own experience as a mother during wartime, in order to enable analytic discussion of charged topics that are often difficult to raise directly with interlocutors, such as feelings of indifference toward others’ suffering or uncertainty about one’s moral stance. Currently, with the support of a Vivian Silver Award (Davies Instittue for International Studies, Hebrew University), the research is expanding to include interviews with additional women with similar profiles.