Monthly Archives: April 2016

My plea to the left: treat Jews the same way you’d treat any other minority

Let’s imagine for just a moment that a small but vocal section of the left was consumed with hatred for one faraway country: barely an hour could pass without them condemning it, not just for this or for that policy, but for its very existence, for the manner of its birth, for what it represented. And now let’s imagine that this country was the only place in the world where the majority of the population, and most of the government, were black.

Published by: The Guardian

AB Yehoshua: ‘Instead of dealing with Palestine, the new generation do a play or write a story’

They are, if not the holy trinity, then at least the hallowed trio. Amos Oz, David Grossman and AB Yehoshua – once hailed as “the three tenors” of Israeli literature, who have for decades served an exalted double role. Inside the country, they are the unofficial liberal conscience of the nation: delivering rousing speeches at demonstrations or firing off newspaper polemics that burn with righteous indignation, whether lamenting Israel’s march rightward, denouncing its presence in the territories occupied since 1967 or making the deeply unfashionable case for peace with the Palestinians. Outside Israel, where literary prizes are heaped on them with unflagging regularity, they offer those same red-hot criticisms – but at the same time, and with no contradiction, also mount a defence of Israel itself: not its governments, but its right to be there and what they see as its enduring necessity.

Published by: The Guardian