Amos Oz is a lawful heir of Judaism

Published in the Jewish Chronicle, 16 September 2005

As if to signal that Rosh Hashanah is coming, British Jews have once again sunk their teeth into a first-class row. Three years ago, the September spat was over some remarks made by the Chief Rabbi. This year, it’s the Israeli novelist Amos Oz who’s in the frame.

To fill in JC readers who were on a sun-lounger at the time, in late August, Oz had a piece published in The Times in which he described the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as the first round in an ongoing battle between Syn-agogue and State. Religious settlers who opposed the pull-out had, in effect, challenged the right of a democratic government to give up sacred land. By overcoming those protests, Ariel Sharon had shown that democratic, rather than “fanatic,” rule still prevails in Israel.

The timing of these remarks and their publication in a British newspaper and broadcast on Radio 4 appalled Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen of Stanmore synagogue. He denounced Oz from his pulpit, calling the prize-winning novelist a “Jew-hating Jew.” Cohen was joined by my fellow JC columnist Melanie Phillips. She accused Oz of arguments that were “dishonest” and “despicable,” said he was an exponent of “anti-Israeli bigotry” and had a “pathological disdain for his own people.”

There is a central mistake in this line of reasoning. Stated simply, Oz is about the last person on the face of God’s earth who could be accused of being a “Jew-hating Jew.” He is, of course, a Jew-loving Jew, as anyone who has ever heard him speak or read his writing will know.

The evidence is not only to be found in Oz’s passion for the Hebrew language or his record of military service defending Israel in two wars, from which he still bears the physical scars. It is to be found in the arguments he has made with unrivalled eloquence for nearly four decades.

Cohen says it is a “pathetic sight” to see “a Jewish novelist courting the acclaim, adulation and royalties of a left-wing, anti-Israel gentile world.” So it would be. But Oz is no such creature. He appears before non-Jewish audiences not to court their adulation but to tell them truths they might not want to hear. “I have news for you,” he says. “Israel is not a Christian country.” It does not believe in turning the other cheek, but in fighting for its life.

Why, he asks, is Israel the only nation in the world which is “on probation,” its existence conditional on good behaviour. Could it be because anti-Semitism still warps the way Christendom (and now Islam) sees the Jews and therefore the Jewish state? If that is the case, then it is the rest of the world, not the Jews, who have to change.

These are the arguments Oz makes to the non-Jewish world, challenging it to ditch its prejudices and see Israel and the Jews through clear, unjaundiced eyes. He has voiced that same, robust view in hundreds of essays, lectures and interviews across the globe. All Cohen and Phillips had to do was listen.

So yes, Oz wins acclaim from non-Jewish audiences. But that’s because he speaks with a clarity and humanity rarely heard on either side of the bitter Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He does not pander to anti-Israel prejudice; he has spent a lifetime challenging it. Politicians, journalists and even Stanmore rabbis do their bit, but few can claim to have made a better case for Zionism — for the Jews’ right to determine their destiny — than Oz has for 40 years.

Nor is this mere Israeli patriotism. Oz’s interest is in Israel as a Jewish country. That’s clear from the language of his work, rich in biblical allusion. He sees his place in a Jewish story that stretches back thousands of years. In that still-seminal text, “In the Land of Israel,” published in 1983, he described Judaism as “a broad and abundant inheritance. And I see myself as one of the legitimate heirs: not as a stepson, or a disloyal and defiant son, or a bastard, but as a lawful heir.”

So Oz does not, as Cohen and Phillips would have you believe, “revile” Judaism. On the contrary, he believes that Judaism should be a living, breathing force — not a museum piece, preserved and unchanging behind glass. He is, of course, against religious coercion and believes in the rule of democratic governments rather than the rule of the rabbi. That was the prime thrust of the essay at the heart of this row. Its target was not religious Judaism, nor even religious Zionism. Oz was taking a stand against the militant wing of the settler movement, against all those who would replace democracy with theocracy.

He is a Jew who loves his people, his culture and his country — and is willing to fight for its democratic soul. To call Amos Oz a Jew-hating Jew is to deny language its meaning. It is an insult which demeans only those who hurl it.

Oz himself is used to such vilification and those who make a progressive case for Israel should get used to it, too. Suggest that an end to the occupation and greater regard for human rights are, in fact, in the practical and moral interest of Israel itself — a country whose fate matters to you deeply — and eventually you’ll be called a traitor, a fifth columnist or a Jew-hating Jew. Even Ariel Sharon, of all people, has had a dose of that treatment in the past few months.

So let the accusers spit out their abuse. Oz’s name will be remembered among the giants by future generations of our people. Who among his enemies can say the same?

Posted on September 16, 2005 05:25 PM

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