In an October 2025 conversation, Israeli singer Achinoam Nini—known worldwide as Noa—argues that coexistence is the region’s only viable future, even as she warns against forgetting who steered Israel into catastrophe.

TEL AVIV / ROME — “The trauma remains, it will take time to cure us,” says Noa, the Israeli singer and veteran peace advocate born Achinoam Nini. “Then we’ll change paths.”

A year after the October 2024 escalation detonated into a grinding war that reordered lives from Gaza City to Tel Aviv and reverberated across European capitals, Noa is still traveling, singing—and refusing to step back from politics. Her message is unambiguous and uncomfortable in a polarized moment: “From the river to the sea there are two peoples, coexistence is our only possibility. We have to accept it.”

That word—acceptance—lands heavily in Israel and among the Jewish diaspora, where grief, rage, and a battered sense of safety compete for oxygen with calls for justice and accountability. For Palestinians, the word carries a different weight: months of bombardment, displacement and scarcity have carved deep, living wounds. Coexistence, in Noa’s framing, is neither romantic nor naive. It is sober triage. “There is no magic partition that will erase history, and no total victory that will silence the other side,” she says. “If we don’t build a political home that protects both peoples, we will keep living inside a permanent emergency.”

Noa is no newcomer to this argument. She sang “There Must Be Another Way” at Eurovision in 2009 alongside the Palestinian singer Mira Awad, a gesture of artistic dissent that drew criticism then and looks prescient now. Over three decades she and guitarist‑partner Gil Dor have played synagogues, cathedrals, and protest stages. The point was never escapism. “Music opens doors that speeches can’t,” she says. “But the doors have to lead somewhere real.”

Her “somewhere real” is a program more practical than utopian: immediate protection of civilians; a political track that acknowledges national aspirations on both sides; international guardrails with teeth; and a hard reckoning inside Israel with the leadership that, in her view, drove the country into a cul‑de‑sac.

That last part is where Noa refuses to soften. “For me, Prime Minister Netanyahu remains a criminal,” she says. “It scares me—the idea that people can forgive him.” The line has ricocheted through Hebrew‑language media and across her social feeds, drawing praise and scorn in equal measure. Noa is keenly aware that words like “criminal” map onto ongoing international processes and domestic investigations. But she insists the moral ledger can’t wait for courtroom calendars. “Leadership is not only legal liability,” she argues. “It is responsibility for choices—how you speak about human beings, how you set goals, what you normalize.”

Inside Israel, that debate is no longer abstract. The year since the war’s worst days has produced fatigued unity at funerals and fragile consensus on bringing captives home, alongside renewed street protests aimed at the prime minister. At military bases and kibbutzim, the conversation is raw: How did intelligence blind spots, doctrinal hubris and coalition politics steer the ship so close to the rocks? Abroad, discomfort has sharpened too. Jewish communities have wrestled, painfully, with the collision between historical trauma and the obligations of universal ethics. Palestinian communities, meanwhile, have tried to keep the world’s attention on a civilian catastrophe that outlasts news cycles.

Noa moves through that minefield with characteristic clarity. Coexistence, she says, is not a slogan to chant until the next flare‑up. It is a structure to build: borders, rights, security arrangements, independent institutions—and an educational project that makes dignity habitual. She favors practical steps over purity tests: curbing incitement on both sides; strengthening cross‑border municipal cooperation where possible; restoring freedom of movement for workers; and anchoring any cease‑fire in enforceable commitments. “A future worth living will always be harder than vengeance,” she says. “But it is the only future that doesn’t devour our children.”

In concert halls this fall—from Sanremo to Vienna—Noa has been introducing new material threaded with lullabies and alarms. The songs are quieter than her headlines, but sharper too. One lyric returns to the image of a home with two doors that share one key: “You turn it left, I turn it right—still the hinge remembers both our names.” She smiles at the metaphor and shrugs: “Coexistence is engineering. You can design it to jam, or you can design it to hold.”

Asked whether the arts can still matter in a season of atrocity images and algorithmic outrage, she resists the false choice. Culture, she says, is where fear is metabolized—or fermented. “Music can humanize, or it can harden. The choice is ours. I want to keep opening the doors.”

Before we part, I ask about forgiveness—the word she raised only to reject in the political sphere. “Personally, forgiveness is essential,” she says after a long pause. “Collectively, it can be dangerous when it erases responsibility. The trauma is here. It will take time to cure us. But healing should not be confused with forgetting. If we remember well, then—tired as we are—we can finally change paths.”