On one or two evenings a week, the narrow room of Tarbutat welcomes many of the last remaining representatives of Israel’s progressive left. On Tuesday, November 4, just before 8 pm, dozens of people – phones in hand – leaned against the café’s blue walls in Tel Aviv to listen to Hillel Cohen, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Speaking at the microphone, in front of the espresso machine, the scholar recounted his journey as a former settler in the occupied West Bank, who broke with that community before becoming a respected voice on Palestinian history, particularly in East Jerusalem.

At the counter, Aviva Ger, 74, sought comfort in these weekly lectures. Worn down by the violence of Israeli political rhetoric and by what she called “hatred,” the theater actor – and an activist for Palestinian rights since 1967 – was pleased to find acquaintances and friends here who had not, in her words, “slipped into a warlike discourse” after October 7. The septuagenarian spoke in French, a language she learned while studying under director Jacques Lecoq in Paris in 1982. Between glasses of white wine, she enjoyed debating the creation of a Palestinian state as the only possible path to lasting peace. “This place is a haven for leftists,” the artist smiled before growing serious. “It may be the last one in the entire country…”

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