January 19, 2024 • 41 mins
Imagine the heartache of a family whose beloved Romy is held captive by terrorists, a stark reminder of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's cruel reach into personal lives. Our latest episode navigates the complexities and emotional turmoil of this ongoing war, including the formidable political strategies of Israel to secure the release of its citizens.
We are joined by Fania Oz Salzberger, a revered Israeli political activist and history professor, who articulates a vision of "humanist Zionism." She advocates for a state founded on the ideals of sanctuary for Jews, yet insists on the imperative of coexistence with Arab neighbours.
Fania tells us Israel was always meant to be a State for Jews, but not a jewish State.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
103 days is 103 days too many and we are running out
of time.
The hostages are running out oftime, but it's day 103, and we
must be beyond the state ofawareness.
This is an emergency thatrequires action and, as
Americans, we expect the UnitedStates the greatest superpower
(00:23):
in the history of the world touse its full power to secure the
hostages release.
This includes making sure thatall partners in the region make
this a top priority, and thatincludes those who maintain
close ties with Hamas Hostageshome now.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My little sister, romy, only 23 years old, went to
the Nova Music Festival.
Instead of having the time ofher life celebrating love, peace
, freedom and friendship, shewas the victim of unimaginable
hate, torture and pure evil.
(01:03):
Ben came to rescue us.
She called me to say and we got10 minutes of hope.
Ben picked her, gaia andanother man name of fear from
the area trying to rescue themfrom the hands of the terrorists
.
10 minutes of grace that allthey have had.
And then Romy called my mother.
Mom, we were ambushed.
(01:26):
They're shooting at us.
Ben is most likely dead.
Gaia was shot and she's notresponding.
A fear is wounded badly.
I was shot on my arm.
If no one will come quickly,I'll be dead.
My sister has asthma and chronicsinusitis.
She needs her inhaler in orderto breathe properly.
(01:49):
We can only imagine how she'sstruggling, gasping for air,
wherever she's held underground.
Can you grasp the feeling offighting to breathe?
Such a basic need, 103 days, noprivacy?
Can you imagine sleeping, goingto the bathroom, changing your
(02:13):
clothes when someone is watchingyou every move?
It's not only that you're incontrol of someone else in your
daily basic needs.
It's also the fear from everymove, every breath, every word
could be the one that will leadto another sexual abuse, to
(02:34):
another threat on your life,another rape.
103 days of horrible pain inher body, of her bleeding
gunshot wound, of her paralyzedhand barely moving her fingers,
suffering from every movement.
Do you think anyone over therecares for her pain?
(02:56):
I miss my little sister.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
You just heard their relatives gut-branching pleas
for their release.
Israel has carried on weeks ofwar in Gaza to crush Hamas and
free the captives.
Palestinians killed, but therecould be as many as 25,000, says
the Gaza Health Ministry.
How many of those were Hamasfighters is unknown, but there
(03:48):
are thousands of them.
The war risks spreading, butlong term, what will become of
Gaza and Israel?
There aren't many voices ofreason in this angry moment, but
Fania Oz Salzburger, thedaughter of the famous Israeli
author Amos Oz, spoke to meabout Israel's beginnings, the
(04:09):
struggle for a life raft whereJews could be safe and where the
state of Israel was not so mucha Jewish state but a state for
Jews.
And maybe later, that's whereright wing leaders like Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu got itall wrong.
Fania Oz Salzburger is anIsraeli political activist and
(04:30):
history professor.
Her books include Israelis andBerlin, and with Amos Oz she
wrote another book called Jewsand Words.
And she joins me from close toCarmel in Israel.
Hi, Fania, Nice to meet you Hi,Carmel.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Hello, Dane, Nice to meet you too.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Nice to meet you, so you wrote a piece that really I
really took me and I thought itwas so timely and important
where you talked about Zionism,a quick guide to Zionism in hard
times, or why, in spite ofeverything, I am a human Zionist
(05:09):
, and I thought it was a veryeloquent and well-written piece
and it reminded me so much ofwhy people went to Israel and
what Israel should be about andwhat it, at its heart, is
probably about.
So, as the war is raging inGaza and there is so much hatred
(05:31):
on both sides right now, whydid you want to write a piece
about Zionism?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Well, first of all, thank you, and thank you for
hosting me on your wonderfulpodcast.
I'm a Zionist and I call myselfa humanist Zionist.
So did my father.
Actually, the term, thecombination of humanist Zionism,
emerged in our conversations afew years before he died and we
(06:03):
realized that actually themainstream Zionist movement,
from Theodor Herzl onwards, orfrom the founding father of
political Zionism in the 19thcentury, and all the way until
the recent two decades, themainstream Zionism has been
(06:25):
moderate.
It has been pragmatic.
It agreed in principle andoften also in practice to a
two-state solution as decidedand as ruled by the United
Nations General Assembly in 1947.
And this Zionism was not aboutconquering and overcoming the
(06:51):
Arabs, let alone ethniccleansing.
It was about living alongsideArabs into ways both within the
state of Israel and Zionism didnot decide what these borders,
what the borders of the state ofIsrael are supposed to be.
That was up to internationaldecisions.
(07:11):
Within the borders of Israel, afull civil equality of Arab,
palestinian citizens and Jewishcitizens and, this door, a
possible viable Palestinianstate.
This was the Israeli status quo, give or take some ages of war,
(07:34):
extremism and so on, but thiswas the Zionist status quo until
about two or three decades ago.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
So Amos Oz.
I read his book 25 years agowhen I was based in Jerusalem as
a correspondent with Canadiantelevision, and it was this.
You know it was this great and Iknow he wrote more than a dozen
of them, but it was this greatbook where he looked at those
horned days of the formation ofIsrael through a child's eyes.
(08:06):
He made the point in that bookhow Jews were being I mean, they
were being killed in Europe.
And then there were posters inplaces like Lithuania and
elsewhere like go back toPalestine or go to Palestine,
and then when they would get toPalestine, they would go back to
Europe.
And he painted, you know, in avery innocent way perhaps, that
(08:32):
you know, perhaps best explainedby a child sometimes, how there
was no, there was no home atthat moment and there was no
place for Jews to be.
And that is why the world today, in most places, supports the
state of Israel.
(08:52):
And there are probably a fewgenerations, if you would agree
with me, that don't understandhow we got here and don't
understand why the state ofIsrael came into being.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yes, this is why I think that the United Nations
Resolution 181 of November 1947is so very important, never mind
the fact that afterwards, bothPalestinians, arab nations and
Israelis disobey some followingUnited Nations resolutions.
(09:23):
This was a decisive plan ofdividing the land between its
two ancestral people.
My book by my father that youmentioned is A Tale of Love and
Darkness and Autobiography, andalthough he describes his
childhood in Jerusalem and theArab Jewish relations and the
(09:44):
United Nations resolutions andthe war of 1948 from the eyes of
a child, this is not aninnocent description in the
sense that the adult, weary,elderly writer is standing there
behind the child's shoulder andhe said something very
(10:05):
interesting about his family,who did come from Europe.
Yes, they did come from Europe,and I came from Europe
following antisemitic attacksand cries, jews back to
Palestine.
But I have to say right nowthat more than half of the
Jewish population here did notcome from Europe.
It was ousted, driven outethnically, please, if you like,
(10:27):
from Arab and Muslim countriesfollowing 1948.
So my European descent isactually a minority descent
among Israeli Jews.
But okay, we are a Europeanfamily, lithuania Jews, educated
, studying, working, and mygreat-grandpa Alexander is a
(10:52):
kind of a Zionist of sorts.
He likes the idea of a statefor the Jews in the land of
Israel, but this is not hisfirst priority in life at all.
And when antisemitic attacksbecome dangerous and my grandpa
Arya is beaten by his schoolfellows and this happens again
(11:15):
these days to Jewish childreneven in the United Kingdom
Beaten and abused by schoolfellows and the graffiti on the
walls say Jews, go to Palestine.
It was very prevalent inEastern European countries.
Alexander decides to move hisfamily not to Palestine, the
land of Israel, he decides tomove his family to some other
(11:39):
European country.
He starts applying and everyonetells him no way.
In the Scandinavian countriesthere is a quota and he has to
wait 27 years.
In the early 1930s you don'thave 27 years to wait.
Germany says no.
(12:00):
Switzerland says and now I'mquoting my father from memory
Switzerland says even one Jewallowed in is one too much.
Canada says your own country,original country, even zero Jews
are too much.
(12:20):
In South Africa, field Marshallsmaps a philocybite in those
days Actually says something tothe effect that if we bring in
no Jews there will be noantisemitism, and we do hate
antisemitism.
So no Jews to South Africaduring the war either.
As the war gets closed, allgates are shut in their faces
(12:44):
and the only thing hisgrandfather manages somehow to
scrape our mandatory BritishPalestine visas for the whole
family.
This is why I'm sitting hereand talking.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Isn't it shocking?
Isn't it shocking?
And thank you for taking usback to that moment where you
wrote in your article as well,that you know, arriving from
Europe and elsewhere, Jewsweren't armed and they didn't
have an army behind them.
I mean, Israel was just a liferaft.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Israel was a life raft with a lot of historical
meaning for a life raft, with alot of historical energies for a
life raft, but it was in termsof its international
justification, and I'm alsofollowing here partially on my
father's lead.
It's not about the biblicaltradition.
It's not about our twomillennia of belonging and
(13:40):
praying and wishing andoccasional migrating back to the
land of Israel.
It is about saving a nationfrom genocide, and the land of
Israel, palestine, was a liferaft.
Now, a life raft doesn't meanthat we should push the other
people out.
On the contrary, a life raftmay mean that they would be
(14:04):
generous enough to cohabit theirland with us.
Of course, the land didn'tbelong.
There was no Palestine.
There was a British mandate ona historical Ottoman region.
That's what.
That's what we had then.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
All right, and that's our interview, because you
wrote about that very eloquentlyand you quoted David Ben-Gurion
as saying in 1918 that the ideaof evicting Arabs of the land
was a harmful, reactionarymirage.
Israel's Declaration ofIndependence puts this more
positively, announcing fullcivil equality to its Arab
citizens, offering peace andneighborlessness to the Arab
(14:42):
countries, a national homelandfor Jews and a democracy for all
its citizens.
But then you said that thatdidn't work out and it's a
tragedy for both people.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
It didn't, but it's still the formula, you know,
dana, it's still the solution,it's still the salvation in
Israel, which is the state ofthe Jews, not a Jewish state in
the sense of some kind of amystical group of fanatics
ordered around by God, but interms of the people, the Jewish
(15:17):
people.
So a state for the Jews and forall its citizens, non-jews too,
and, I'm adding, next door to astable, sovereign Palestine.
That was the solution.
Now, the fact that Ben-Gurionhad to say it back in 1918, and
we have to be honest about itI'm not honest about my right
wing fringes, my lunatics, mynationalists, who are
(15:39):
unfortunately today still asmall minority but represented
in the government, andBen-Gurion had to answer back to
someone when he said that.
So there were lunatic,nationalistic Jewish fringes in
the Zionist movement, thedifference being that they were
never in control, until thesedays, when they are represented
(16:04):
in minor jobs in Netanyahu'scabinet and utter the worst
racist obscenities that you canimagine.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
You wrote a state for Jews, not a Jewish state,
exactly.
What's the difference?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I think Herzl himself was very aware of the
difference when he titled hisfuturistic novel of 1904, the
Ayuddin state and not theYiddish state, so the state of
the Jews and not the Jewishstate.
He was very weary.
He was a secularized liberalDemocrat very much in touch with
(16:49):
his times and he was veryworried about some kind of a
metaphysical, metahistoricalidea that God is returning the
Jews to Israel to accomplishsome historical task of theirs.
There were people speaking likethat.
(17:09):
Herzl and many of hisco-founders of Zionism did not
like that, because their Zionismwas a humanist Zionism.
If they didn't call it so, thisis my coin and it applies to
them.
Humanists don't only mean to benice to other human beings.
This is the main thing, butit's not only that.
(17:32):
It's also the belief that humanbeings, rather than divine or
mysterious, mystical elements,run history and can change
history.
So the idea was that individualhuman beings, jews, would come
to the land of Israel, changethe tragic trajectory of Israeli
(17:56):
history for the last twomillennia, have a place to call
their own in part of the land ofIsrael, their own very own
sovereign state, shared withArabs both within and outside
its future borders.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
So people would say now, especially after what
happened in October the 7th,that you're a dreamer and that
more and more Israelis nowrealize that any kind of
two-state solution is just anexcuse by the Palestinians to
(18:31):
eventually push them into thesea.
And what's happened in Gaza interms of it being a terror base,
well, sooner or later happenedin the West Bank too.
They talk about reoccupation,reintroducing settlements into
Gaza.
You're a dreamer?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I'm a dreamer at this moment.
Yes, by the way, I reject thesepeople's hopes, certainly of
reoccupying Gaza.
I do not reject their fear.
People here in Israel around me, my own people, the center left
not the right lunatic thecenter left are dazzled with
(19:16):
shock and horror.
Ongoing shock and horror, don'tforget.
We still have the hostagesbeing killed by the day,
murdered, horribly murdered bythe day.
We still have children andwomen in Gaza.
We still discover and identifythe dead of 7th of October.
They are naturally enough.
(19:39):
They reject the notion of aPalestinian state next door
anytime soon.
I also reject the notion of aPalestinian state next door
tomorrow morning because itcould easily be a Hamas state.
I can give you numbers that Iread this morning.
Latest polls 70%, 70%, 70% ofIsraelis reject the idea of a
(20:02):
Palestinian state.
20% are for this I foundencouraging.
Even in this horrific time, 20%are still for it.
Unfortunately, Dana, thenumbers in the West Bank I don't
know about Gaza, I assume quitesimilar.
The numbers in the West Bankare over 90% in support of what
(20:24):
Hamas did in the 7th of October.
This is not even against theJewish state.
It is for massacring the Jewsone by one.
These are the wins of war andwe can expect a huge, sudden,
immediate radicalization of bothsides as long as the memory is
(20:44):
fresh and the war is going on.
This does not mean that in theforeseeable future, with
hands-on internationalintervention and the ousting of
the Netanyahu government infavor of a more traditional
Zionist, humanist government,would not be able to work out a
(21:04):
path, a horizon, a roadmap forsetting up, first of all, a
demilitarized Palestine,monitored by international
powers, and, in the future,perhaps in the further future,
as two-state solution.
That's the only hope we have,isn't it?
(21:25):
What else do we have?
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Do you believe that you have to convince the Israeli
public and pull more and moreto that 20% that would support a
two-state solution?
Or is it the vision, much likethe peace accords between Egypt
and Israel that were done somany years ago, that the leaders
(21:54):
have to lead?
They have to believe in theprocess, just like Yitzhak Rabin
did when he was prime ministerbefore he was shot by a Jewish
extremist?
They need to.
You need new leadership.
They need to sign on to theidea of a two-state solution and
then Israeli public opinionprobably not now, so soon and
(22:16):
while Israelis are still beingheld hostage in Gaza, but months
from now, it's really the onlyalternative that people will
have to come around to believein.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yes, but after the 7th of October.
I'm adding another factor.
This is exactly what I believebefore and I still, in principle
, believe it.
I don't think it will takemonths.
I think it will take years andno love will be lost between
Gaza, the Gaza part of Palestine, and Israelis within the coming
two or three generations.
But this is not about love, noteven about peace.
(22:51):
It's about a permanentterritorial agreement.
This is my horizon.
I'm not saying peace and love.
I will leave it to ourgreat-great grandchildren.
Maybe they will be able to behippies again.
We can't anymore.
So, yes, the extra factor whichhas become so clear after the
(23:11):
7th of October is a powerfulinternational presence and
intervention in Gaza and, ifneeded, in the West Bank and, if
needed, pressing Israeldiplomatically, but hard.
This is a factor we can nolonger do without.
(23:32):
Israel and PalestinianAuthority are not sovereign and
not able.
Some of their leaders arecertainly not willing to strike
a deal in the coming future.
It will have to beinternational pressure and, mind
you, not the United Nations.
We have zero trust in theUnited Nations and all its
(23:54):
organizations, not least UnitedNations women organization, are
we not?
Speaker 4 (24:03):
saying sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So I'm just saying an international force, hopefully
the input of moderate Arabregimes.
Israel should not rule Gaza byany means.
We need the United States,europe and the Gulf States,
perhaps Egypt to put it moreprecisely.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
You're talking about a divorce.
You're not talking about love.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
No, that was my father's famous metaphor help us
to divorce.
This is not love.
It will not be love.
Of course we will have personal, hopefully, love affairs and
friendships we already dobetween Palestinians and
Israelis, certainly withinIsrael, also with the West Bank,
with Gaza, I don't know To putit very politely.
It will take a while.
(24:50):
We are not in the business ofbefriending Gazans these days.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
I feel like I'm in a revolving door of time talking
to you.
You must feel it too, in thesense that in the 90s, the Oslo
Accords proposed much of whatwe're talking about Two-state
solutions, separation.
Israeli soldiers left Hebron,bethlehem, ramallah I covered it
(25:18):
all In Gaza.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh, yes, that was included In another stage.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yes, and then a five-year interim period,
perhaps leading to a Palestinianstate, although that wasn't
written in the Accord as far asI remember.
And then the extremists won theday Bus bombs in Tel Aviv,
Jerusalem cafes, israeliextremists.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Don't forget the Israeli, the Jewish extremists
who murdered Rabin, of course,and then, of course, israeli
extremists who twice went onshootouts in the Palestinian
area, and that was immediatelyfollowed by the second in Tifada
.
All hell broke loose.
The Oslo Accords were not evengiven a chance, not given a
(26:08):
period of grace.
So we haven't tried.
You are not in a revolving doorin this sense that we haven't
really tried to apply the OsloAccords, not yet.
We will not return to them.
They're not relevant anymore.
We will need to create a newAccord and again have a powerful
international presence as it isbeing applied to realities.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Why are the Oslo Accords not relevant anymore?
Because the joint patrolsbetween Palestinians and
Israelis and all of that justdon't.
They're not going to workanymore.
So that's why you say you needa lot of the elements of the
Oslo Accords, such as access toJerusalem, discussions of the
right of return of refugees ornot, or compensation.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Oh yeah, All this will be relevant for a new
Accord, of course.
What Oslo lacked is, as I'vebeen saying and repeating myself
, soldiers on the ground.
I'll be even clearer Soldierson the ground from other
nations' army keeping the peace.
Another factor which I haven'tmentioned yet and not appearing
(27:17):
the Oslo Accords and its absencewas detrimental was the
education system in thePalestinian Authority in Gaza.
I'm sorry to say that now smallparts, but parts of the
education system in Israel isalso becoming extremist, but the
whole of the education systemin the future Palestine would
(27:40):
have to be changed.
The public sphere would have to.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I think what you're talking about there may be a lot
of people don't understand.
It's even during the OsloAccords and the peace process,
palestinian television glorifiedsuicide bombings and attacks in
cafes and suicide bombers.
In Oslo, too, was actuallydiscussed a lot of that and said
(28:04):
okay, take, if you really wantto be living beside Israel in
peace, then take away theglorification of killing
Israelis.
And that's one of the thingsthat was in the Accords but
never implemented.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Never implemented.
In Gaza there is, there was aTV, kids Television channel
which showed I don't know if youever saw him that famous
Palestinian mouse, a kind of aMickey Mouse.
Poor things, poor kids, that'swhat they could were able to
watch.
And this mouse keeps callingfor the destruction of Israel
(28:38):
until bad Israeli guys come intothe studio and kill that little
, poor little mouse, to thetrauma, of course, of the little
Palestinian viewers.
This is awful.
This has to disappear.
This must disappear.
Also, our extremism.
But our extremism is small inthe hyper nationalist and hyper
religious schools compared tothe overall attitude of the
(29:04):
Palestinian cultural system.
This is goes deep.
This will have to change as wego along, in parallel to
demilitarization, which is notgoing to be easy, in parallel to
international forces keeping astrong presence.
These are the conditions, dana.
You know we can't do withoutthem, but if implemented, we
(29:26):
have hope.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Do you find it disturbing difficult to
rationalize the fact that theJews that fled oppression in
Europe and in the Middle East,as you rightfully pointed out,
sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews noware having I don't want to say
having to, but they areoppressing Palestinians in Gaza
(29:54):
and in the West Bank in veryuncomfortable ways that the
founders of the state of Israelcould never have imagined.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Of course I find it tragic and Ben Gurion lived long
enough to see 1967, theoccupation so called occupation,
because I mean the realoccupation began after the Six
Day War in 1967.
And ever since I was a youngadult or a late teenager, I
joined the peace movements.
(30:19):
My father helped to found them.
There are several peacemovements still existing, such
as peace now and others thathave demonstrated and told a
succession of prime ministers inIsrael that putting the
settlements where they did was afatal mistake.
We were right.
(30:41):
By the time Rabin came to powerit was his second term in office
in 1993, there was a majorityof Israelis, of Jewish Israelis,
supporting the Oslo Accord.
This is very, very important.
So, yes, we knew and we saidand we cried out loud that the
occupation was wrong and immoraland unjustified and that within
(31:07):
the occupation there arepractices happening, legal
practices, military practices,human behavior which is
corrupting us, corruptingIsraeli society.
We screened that and manypeople listened.
So Rabin was elected and giventhe mandate to go ahead with a
two state solution.
We know, we know.
(31:27):
Problem is that after theSecond Intifada and the rise of
right wing populism andNetanyahu's own charismatic and
destructive personality, we havebecome a minority.
We are a significant minority.
We might become a majorityagain.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
You might become a majority again, but it seems
like a very distant dream, andforgive me for using that word
again.
But is there a and maybe thisis the wrong term I wanted to
ask you is there a peace campstill alive in Israel?
Maybe it's not a peace camp,though Maybe we should
characterize it as somethingelse, something more practical.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Okay, so practical is exactly the point.
You know, when you keep talkingabout me dreaming, you're
thinking peace and love.
I'm not thinking peace and loveanymore.
I'm awake.
By the way, I'm awake frombefore the 7th of October.
I'm awake from the time when Isaw Arafat's successor, mahmoud
Abbas Abu Mazen, fail in everytest and drop every chance to
(32:33):
kick the Ossu agreement intolife again, and then Netanyahu
came and the whole thing, ofcourse, came to an end.
I'm not a dreamer in the senseof a practical territorial
solution and, on this, this isnot the peace camp.
Okay, peace camp is now 20,perhaps 25%.
We are going to march, by theway, tomorrow in Tel Aviv, if Mr
(32:56):
Ben Gver's police will not beatus up at the very beginning.
We are going to march in TelAviv for Jewish Arab peace and
there will be thousands IsraeliPalestinians, israeli Jews.
So maybe 20%, maybe less now,because some people are still so
shocked they're not sayingpeace anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
But you have to be heroic at this moment, don't you
?
To go to the street amid somuch anger and bloodshed and
talk about peace, but at thesame time, it's in so many ways
sensible.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Well, you know, if a policeman beats us up tomorrow
it's happened to me once beforeI just hope that my husband will
get him on his smartphonecamera.
That's the main outcome, whichis a good outcome because this
is still a democracy and thispoliceman at some point will be
punished Not right now.
Remember, these are emergencytimes for Israel as well as from
(34:01):
Gaza.
We are bombarded from, stillfrom Gaza.
There was a barrage of rocketsyesterday.
We are bombarded constantly byHezbollah in the north.
150,000 Israelis, by my lastcount, are evacuees, refugees in
their own countries.
The whole regions around theGaza and Lebanese border are
(34:23):
completely empty of civilians.
This is an emergency.
So, yes, I can be a dreamer andtalk about peace or territorial
hold, but the fact that 20% ofIsraelis today are still saying
this In agreement a two-statesolution, put love on one side,
(34:43):
but a two-state solution this Ifind hopeful, rather than its
opposite.
I think that by the time thingscalm down and they'll have to
come down at some point if theNetanyahu government is replaced
by a responsible center, center, center, right, center, left,
(35:04):
center, center government andthis is what the polls are
telling us now, with significantlikelihood, I think, then this
government will start tellingits people what needs to be done
, while accommodating theiremotions and their fears.
I can only wish Dana that therewould be an equivalent
(35:24):
Palestinian leadership out there.
We need patience.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
That was my last question to you.
Do you think, with all of yourvision and that 20% of Israelis
who I think, with a more centralgovernment leading them and
informing them, might become 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, and maybe
that's hopeful, but do you think, on the Palestinian side, that
(35:49):
you have those correspondingmoderates with vision?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Well, exactly, not exactly in a different way from
us.
The political system somehowshoots up the fanatics and keeps
the moderates down.
This was true also,unfortunately, for Israel in the
last decade, but it's doublytrue for the Palestinians.
There have been many moderatevoices.
Most of them are not thereanymore because they packed up
(36:16):
and went away when Arafat andhis tugs, if you forgive me came
into the West Bank in the 1990s.
That was another outcome of theOso agreement.
Among the Arafat and now AbuMazen Mahmoud Abbas circles,
there are a few moderates.
I don't think their voices areheard.
We will have to see what historybrings up in this lottery of
(36:41):
the next leader after MahmoudAbbas.
Who knows, maybe there would bea group of brave Palestinians
who would say and listen to this.
We hate the guts of Israel, butwe realize we have to exist
next door to Israel.
So we are moving on to aterritorial agreement.
And my father said if I canfinish with this quote, my
(37:07):
father said a real leader is notthe one who tells his or her
people what they want to hear.
A real leader tells her peoplewhat, deep in their hearts, they
know must be done.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Fania Oz Salzberger, and again I just wanted to say
that it's such an honor to talkto you and your article A Quick
Guide to Zionism in Hard Timesor why, in Spite of Everything,
I'm a Human Zionist.
Don't take my paraphrasing ofthat article or the way I led
Fania through the interview.
Go and read the article,because it tells you more about
(37:49):
the spirit and heart of Israelthan maybe we were able to
squeeze out in a podcastinterview, but it's so well
written and so thoughtful.
Fania, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Thank you, Dana, for the opportunity, and the article
is accessible free online.
Just google my name and theword Humanist, Zionist.
Toda Toda rabbalacha.
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And that's our backstory.
This week, I wanted to bringyou Fania Oz-Saltzberger's
interview because I think it'sall about the future.
How do Israeli and Palestiniansdig themselves out of this
latest cycle of violence thatthreatens to drag us all into
the quicksand of hatred and warin the Middle East?
I'm Daniel Lewis.
Thanks for listening, share thepodcast and I'll talk to you
(38:40):
again soon.
You.
103 days is 103 days too many and we are running out
of time.
The hostages are running out oftime, but it's day 103, and we
must be beyond the state ofawareness.
This is an emergency thatrequires action and, as
Americans, we expect the UnitedStates the greatest superpower
(00:23):
in the history of the world touse its full power to secure the
hostages release.
This includes making sure thatall partners in the region make
this a top priority, and thatincludes those who maintain
close ties with Hamas Hostageshome now.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My little sister, romy, only 23 years old, went to
the Nova Music Festival.
Instead of having the time ofher life celebrating love, peace
, freedom and friendship, shewas the victim of unimaginable
hate, torture and pure evil.
(01:03):
Ben came to rescue us.
She called me to say and we got10 minutes of hope.
Ben picked her, gaia andanother man name of fear from
the area trying to rescue themfrom the hands of the terrorists
.
10 minutes of grace that allthey have had.
And then Romy called my mother.
Mom, we were ambushed.
(01:26):
They're shooting at us.
Ben is most likely dead.
Gaia was shot and she's notresponding.
A fear is wounded badly.
I was shot on my arm.
If no one will come quickly,I'll be dead.
My sister has asthma and chronicsinusitis.
She needs her inhaler in orderto breathe properly.
(01:49):
We can only imagine how she'sstruggling, gasping for air,
wherever she's held underground.
Can you grasp the feeling offighting to breathe?
Such a basic need, 103 days, noprivacy?
Can you imagine sleeping, goingto the bathroom, changing your
(02:13):
clothes when someone is watchingyou every move?
It's not only that you're incontrol of someone else in your
daily basic needs.
It's also the fear from everymove, every breath, every word
could be the one that will leadto another sexual abuse, to
(02:34):
another threat on your life,another rape.
103 days of horrible pain inher body, of her bleeding
gunshot wound, of her paralyzedhand barely moving her fingers,
suffering from every movement.
Do you think anyone over therecares for her pain?
(02:56):
I miss my little sister.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
You just heard their relatives gut-branching pleas
for their release.
Israel has carried on weeks ofwar in Gaza to crush Hamas and
free the captives.
Palestinians killed, but therecould be as many as 25,000, says
the Gaza Health Ministry.
How many of those were Hamasfighters is unknown, but there
(03:48):
are thousands of them.
The war risks spreading, butlong term, what will become of
Gaza and Israel?
There aren't many voices ofreason in this angry moment, but
Fania Oz Salzburger, thedaughter of the famous Israeli
author Amos Oz, spoke to meabout Israel's beginnings, the
(04:09):
struggle for a life raft whereJews could be safe and where the
state of Israel was not so mucha Jewish state but a state for
Jews.
And maybe later, that's whereright wing leaders like Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu got itall wrong.
Fania Oz Salzburger is anIsraeli political activist and
(04:30):
history professor.
Her books include Israelis andBerlin, and with Amos Oz she
wrote another book called Jewsand Words.
And she joins me from close toCarmel in Israel.
Hi, Fania, Nice to meet you Hi,Carmel.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Hello, Dane, Nice to meet you too.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Nice to meet you, so you wrote a piece that really I
really took me and I thought itwas so timely and important
where you talked about Zionism,a quick guide to Zionism in hard
times, or why, in spite ofeverything, I am a human Zionist
(05:09):
, and I thought it was a veryeloquent and well-written piece
and it reminded me so much ofwhy people went to Israel and
what Israel should be about andwhat it, at its heart, is
probably about.
So, as the war is raging inGaza and there is so much hatred
(05:31):
on both sides right now, whydid you want to write a piece
about Zionism?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Well, first of all, thank you, and thank you for
hosting me on your wonderfulpodcast.
I'm a Zionist and I call myselfa humanist Zionist.
So did my father.
Actually, the term, thecombination of humanist Zionism,
emerged in our conversations afew years before he died and we
(06:03):
realized that actually themainstream Zionist movement,
from Theodor Herzl onwards, orfrom the founding father of
political Zionism in the 19thcentury, and all the way until
the recent two decades, themainstream Zionism has been
(06:25):
moderate.
It has been pragmatic.
It agreed in principle andoften also in practice to a
two-state solution as decidedand as ruled by the United
Nations General Assembly in 1947.
And this Zionism was not aboutconquering and overcoming the
(06:51):
Arabs, let alone ethniccleansing.
It was about living alongsideArabs into ways both within the
state of Israel and Zionism didnot decide what these borders,
what the borders of the state ofIsrael are supposed to be.
That was up to internationaldecisions.
(07:11):
Within the borders of Israel, afull civil equality of Arab,
palestinian citizens and Jewishcitizens and, this door, a
possible viable Palestinianstate.
This was the Israeli status quo, give or take some ages of war,
(07:34):
extremism and so on, but thiswas the Zionist status quo until
about two or three decades ago.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
So Amos Oz.
I read his book 25 years agowhen I was based in Jerusalem as
a correspondent with Canadiantelevision, and it was this.
You know it was this great and Iknow he wrote more than a dozen
of them, but it was this greatbook where he looked at those
horned days of the formation ofIsrael through a child's eyes.
(08:06):
He made the point in that bookhow Jews were being I mean, they
were being killed in Europe.
And then there were posters inplaces like Lithuania and
elsewhere like go back toPalestine or go to Palestine,
and then when they would get toPalestine, they would go back to
Europe.
And he painted, you know, in avery innocent way perhaps, that
(08:32):
you know, perhaps best explainedby a child sometimes, how there
was no, there was no home atthat moment and there was no
place for Jews to be.
And that is why the world today, in most places, supports the
state of Israel.
(08:52):
And there are probably a fewgenerations, if you would agree
with me, that don't understandhow we got here and don't
understand why the state ofIsrael came into being.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yes, this is why I think that the United Nations
Resolution 181 of November 1947is so very important, never mind
the fact that afterwards, bothPalestinians, arab nations and
Israelis disobey some followingUnited Nations resolutions.
(09:23):
This was a decisive plan ofdividing the land between its
two ancestral people.
My book by my father that youmentioned is A Tale of Love and
Darkness and Autobiography, andalthough he describes his
childhood in Jerusalem and theArab Jewish relations and the
(09:44):
United Nations resolutions andthe war of 1948 from the eyes of
a child, this is not aninnocent description in the
sense that the adult, weary,elderly writer is standing there
behind the child's shoulder andhe said something very
(10:05):
interesting about his family,who did come from Europe.
Yes, they did come from Europe,and I came from Europe
following antisemitic attacksand cries, jews back to
Palestine.
But I have to say right nowthat more than half of the
Jewish population here did notcome from Europe.
It was ousted, driven outethnically, please, if you like,
(10:27):
from Arab and Muslim countriesfollowing 1948.
So my European descent isactually a minority descent
among Israeli Jews.
But okay, we are a Europeanfamily, lithuania Jews, educated
, studying, working, and mygreat-grandpa Alexander is a
(10:52):
kind of a Zionist of sorts.
He likes the idea of a statefor the Jews in the land of
Israel, but this is not hisfirst priority in life at all.
And when antisemitic attacksbecome dangerous and my grandpa
Arya is beaten by his schoolfellows and this happens again
(11:15):
these days to Jewish childreneven in the United Kingdom
Beaten and abused by schoolfellows and the graffiti on the
walls say Jews, go to Palestine.
It was very prevalent inEastern European countries.
Alexander decides to move hisfamily not to Palestine, the
land of Israel, he decides tomove his family to some other
(11:39):
European country.
He starts applying and everyonetells him no way.
In the Scandinavian countriesthere is a quota and he has to
wait 27 years.
In the early 1930s you don'thave 27 years to wait.
Germany says no.
(12:00):
Switzerland says and now I'mquoting my father from memory
Switzerland says even one Jewallowed in is one too much.
Canada says your own country,original country, even zero Jews
are too much.
(12:20):
In South Africa, field Marshallsmaps a philocybite in those
days Actually says something tothe effect that if we bring in
no Jews there will be noantisemitism, and we do hate
antisemitism.
So no Jews to South Africaduring the war either.
As the war gets closed, allgates are shut in their faces
(12:44):
and the only thing hisgrandfather manages somehow to
scrape our mandatory BritishPalestine visas for the whole
family.
This is why I'm sitting hereand talking.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Isn't it shocking?
Isn't it shocking?
And thank you for taking usback to that moment where you
wrote in your article as well,that you know, arriving from
Europe and elsewhere, Jewsweren't armed and they didn't
have an army behind them.
I mean, Israel was just a liferaft.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Israel was a life raft with a lot of historical
meaning for a life raft, with alot of historical energies for a
life raft, but it was in termsof its international
justification, and I'm alsofollowing here partially on my
father's lead.
It's not about the biblicaltradition.
It's not about our twomillennia of belonging and
(13:40):
praying and wishing andoccasional migrating back to the
land of Israel.
It is about saving a nationfrom genocide, and the land of
Israel, palestine, was a liferaft.
Now, a life raft doesn't meanthat we should push the other
people out.
On the contrary, a life raftmay mean that they would be
(14:04):
generous enough to cohabit theirland with us.
Of course, the land didn'tbelong.
There was no Palestine.
There was a British mandate ona historical Ottoman region.
That's what.
That's what we had then.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
All right, and that's our interview, because you
wrote about that very eloquentlyand you quoted David Ben-Gurion
as saying in 1918 that the ideaof evicting Arabs of the land
was a harmful, reactionarymirage.
Israel's Declaration ofIndependence puts this more
positively, announcing fullcivil equality to its Arab
citizens, offering peace andneighborlessness to the Arab
(14:42):
countries, a national homelandfor Jews and a democracy for all
its citizens.
But then you said that thatdidn't work out and it's a
tragedy for both people.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
It didn't, but it's still the formula, you know,
dana, it's still the solution,it's still the salvation in
Israel, which is the state ofthe Jews, not a Jewish state in
the sense of some kind of amystical group of fanatics
ordered around by God, but interms of the people, the Jewish
(15:17):
people.
So a state for the Jews and forall its citizens, non-jews too,
and, I'm adding, next door to astable, sovereign Palestine.
That was the solution.
Now, the fact that Ben-Gurionhad to say it back in 1918, and
we have to be honest about itI'm not honest about my right
wing fringes, my lunatics, mynationalists, who are
(15:39):
unfortunately today still asmall minority but represented
in the government, andBen-Gurion had to answer back to
someone when he said that.
So there were lunatic,nationalistic Jewish fringes in
the Zionist movement, thedifference being that they were
never in control, until thesedays, when they are represented
(16:04):
in minor jobs in Netanyahu'scabinet and utter the worst
racist obscenities that you canimagine.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
You wrote a state for Jews, not a Jewish state,
exactly.
What's the difference?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I think Herzl himself was very aware of the
difference when he titled hisfuturistic novel of 1904, the
Ayuddin state and not theYiddish state, so the state of
the Jews and not the Jewishstate.
He was very weary.
He was a secularized liberalDemocrat very much in touch with
(16:49):
his times and he was veryworried about some kind of a
metaphysical, metahistoricalidea that God is returning the
Jews to Israel to accomplishsome historical task of theirs.
There were people speaking likethat.
(17:09):
Herzl and many of hisco-founders of Zionism did not
like that, because their Zionismwas a humanist Zionism.
If they didn't call it so, thisis my coin and it applies to
them.
Humanists don't only mean to benice to other human beings.
This is the main thing, butit's not only that.
(17:32):
It's also the belief that humanbeings, rather than divine or
mysterious, mystical elements,run history and can change
history.
So the idea was that individualhuman beings, jews, would come
to the land of Israel, changethe tragic trajectory of Israeli
(17:56):
history for the last twomillennia, have a place to call
their own in part of the land ofIsrael, their own very own
sovereign state, shared withArabs both within and outside
its future borders.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
So people would say now, especially after what
happened in October the 7th,that you're a dreamer and that
more and more Israelis nowrealize that any kind of
two-state solution is just anexcuse by the Palestinians to
(18:31):
eventually push them into thesea.
And what's happened in Gaza interms of it being a terror base,
well, sooner or later happenedin the West Bank too.
They talk about reoccupation,reintroducing settlements into
Gaza.
You're a dreamer?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I'm a dreamer at this moment.
Yes, by the way, I reject thesepeople's hopes, certainly of
reoccupying Gaza.
I do not reject their fear.
People here in Israel around me, my own people, the center left
not the right lunatic thecenter left are dazzled with
(19:16):
shock and horror.
Ongoing shock and horror, don'tforget.
We still have the hostagesbeing killed by the day,
murdered, horribly murdered bythe day.
We still have children andwomen in Gaza.
We still discover and identifythe dead of 7th of October.
They are naturally enough.
(19:39):
They reject the notion of aPalestinian state next door
anytime soon.
I also reject the notion of aPalestinian state next door
tomorrow morning because itcould easily be a Hamas state.
I can give you numbers that Iread this morning.
Latest polls 70%, 70%, 70% ofIsraelis reject the idea of a
(20:02):
Palestinian state.
20% are for this I foundencouraging.
Even in this horrific time, 20%are still for it.
Unfortunately, Dana, thenumbers in the West Bank I don't
know about Gaza, I assume quitesimilar.
The numbers in the West Bankare over 90% in support of what
(20:24):
Hamas did in the 7th of October.
This is not even against theJewish state.
It is for massacring the Jewsone by one.
These are the wins of war andwe can expect a huge, sudden,
immediate radicalization of bothsides as long as the memory is
(20:44):
fresh and the war is going on.
This does not mean that in theforeseeable future, with
hands-on internationalintervention and the ousting of
the Netanyahu government infavor of a more traditional
Zionist, humanist government,would not be able to work out a
(21:04):
path, a horizon, a roadmap forsetting up, first of all, a
demilitarized Palestine,monitored by international
powers, and, in the future,perhaps in the further future,
as two-state solution.
That's the only hope we have,isn't it?
(21:25):
What else do we have?
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Do you believe that you have to convince the Israeli
public and pull more and moreto that 20% that would support a
two-state solution?
Or is it the vision, much likethe peace accords between Egypt
and Israel that were done somany years ago, that the leaders
(21:54):
have to lead?
They have to believe in theprocess, just like Yitzhak Rabin
did when he was prime ministerbefore he was shot by a Jewish
extremist?
They need to.
You need new leadership.
They need to sign on to theidea of a two-state solution and
then Israeli public opinionprobably not now, so soon and
(22:16):
while Israelis are still beingheld hostage in Gaza, but months
from now, it's really the onlyalternative that people will
have to come around to believein.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yes, but after the 7th of October.
I'm adding another factor.
This is exactly what I believebefore and I still, in principle
, believe it.
I don't think it will takemonths.
I think it will take years andno love will be lost between
Gaza, the Gaza part of Palestine, and Israelis within the coming
two or three generations.
But this is not about love, noteven about peace.
(22:51):
It's about a permanentterritorial agreement.
This is my horizon.
I'm not saying peace and love.
I will leave it to ourgreat-great grandchildren.
Maybe they will be able to behippies again.
We can't anymore.
So, yes, the extra factor whichhas become so clear after the
(23:11):
7th of October is a powerfulinternational presence and
intervention in Gaza and, ifneeded, in the West Bank and, if
needed, pressing Israeldiplomatically, but hard.
This is a factor we can nolonger do without.
(23:32):
Israel and PalestinianAuthority are not sovereign and
not able.
Some of their leaders arecertainly not willing to strike
a deal in the coming future.
It will have to beinternational pressure and, mind
you, not the United Nations.
We have zero trust in theUnited Nations and all its
(23:54):
organizations, not least UnitedNations women organization, are
we not?
Speaker 4 (24:03):
saying sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So I'm just saying an international force, hopefully
the input of moderate Arabregimes.
Israel should not rule Gaza byany means.
We need the United States,europe and the Gulf States,
perhaps Egypt to put it moreprecisely.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
You're talking about a divorce.
You're not talking about love.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
No, that was my father's famous metaphor help us
to divorce.
This is not love.
It will not be love.
Of course we will have personal, hopefully, love affairs and
friendships we already dobetween Palestinians and
Israelis, certainly withinIsrael, also with the West Bank,
with Gaza, I don't know To putit very politely.
It will take a while.
(24:50):
We are not in the business ofbefriending Gazans these days.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
I feel like I'm in a revolving door of time talking
to you.
You must feel it too, in thesense that in the 90s, the Oslo
Accords proposed much of whatwe're talking about Two-state
solutions, separation.
Israeli soldiers left Hebron,bethlehem, ramallah I covered it
(25:18):
all In Gaza.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh, yes, that was included In another stage.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yes, and then a five-year interim period,
perhaps leading to a Palestinianstate, although that wasn't
written in the Accord as far asI remember.
And then the extremists won theday Bus bombs in Tel Aviv,
Jerusalem cafes, israeliextremists.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Don't forget the Israeli, the Jewish extremists
who murdered Rabin, of course,and then, of course, israeli
extremists who twice went onshootouts in the Palestinian
area, and that was immediatelyfollowed by the second in Tifada
.
All hell broke loose.
The Oslo Accords were not evengiven a chance, not given a
(26:08):
period of grace.
So we haven't tried.
You are not in a revolving doorin this sense that we haven't
really tried to apply the OsloAccords, not yet.
We will not return to them.
They're not relevant anymore.
We will need to create a newAccord and again have a powerful
international presence as it isbeing applied to realities.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Why are the Oslo Accords not relevant anymore?
Because the joint patrolsbetween Palestinians and
Israelis and all of that justdon't.
They're not going to workanymore.
So that's why you say you needa lot of the elements of the
Oslo Accords, such as access toJerusalem, discussions of the
right of return of refugees ornot, or compensation.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Oh yeah, All this will be relevant for a new
Accord, of course.
What Oslo lacked is, as I'vebeen saying and repeating myself
, soldiers on the ground.
I'll be even clearer Soldierson the ground from other
nations' army keeping the peace.
Another factor which I haven'tmentioned yet and not appearing
(27:17):
the Oslo Accords and its absencewas detrimental was the
education system in thePalestinian Authority in Gaza.
I'm sorry to say that now smallparts, but parts of the
education system in Israel isalso becoming extremist, but the
whole of the education systemin the future Palestine would
(27:40):
have to be changed.
The public sphere would have to.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I think what you're talking about there may be a lot
of people don't understand.
It's even during the OsloAccords and the peace process,
palestinian television glorifiedsuicide bombings and attacks in
cafes and suicide bombers.
In Oslo, too, was actuallydiscussed a lot of that and said
(28:04):
okay, take, if you really wantto be living beside Israel in
peace, then take away theglorification of killing
Israelis.
And that's one of the thingsthat was in the Accords but
never implemented.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Never implemented.
In Gaza there is, there was aTV, kids Television channel
which showed I don't know if youever saw him that famous
Palestinian mouse, a kind of aMickey Mouse.
Poor things, poor kids, that'swhat they could were able to
watch.
And this mouse keeps callingfor the destruction of Israel
(28:38):
until bad Israeli guys come intothe studio and kill that little
, poor little mouse, to thetrauma, of course, of the little
Palestinian viewers.
This is awful.
This has to disappear.
This must disappear.
Also, our extremism.
But our extremism is small inthe hyper nationalist and hyper
religious schools compared tothe overall attitude of the
(29:04):
Palestinian cultural system.
This is goes deep.
This will have to change as wego along, in parallel to
demilitarization, which is notgoing to be easy, in parallel to
international forces keeping astrong presence.
These are the conditions, dana.
You know we can't do withoutthem, but if implemented, we
(29:26):
have hope.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Do you find it disturbing difficult to
rationalize the fact that theJews that fled oppression in
Europe and in the Middle East,as you rightfully pointed out,
sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews noware having I don't want to say
having to, but they areoppressing Palestinians in Gaza
(29:54):
and in the West Bank in veryuncomfortable ways that the
founders of the state of Israelcould never have imagined.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Of course I find it tragic and Ben Gurion lived long
enough to see 1967, theoccupation so called occupation,
because I mean the realoccupation began after the Six
Day War in 1967.
And ever since I was a youngadult or a late teenager, I
joined the peace movements.
(30:19):
My father helped to found them.
There are several peacemovements still existing, such
as peace now and others thathave demonstrated and told a
succession of prime ministers inIsrael that putting the
settlements where they did was afatal mistake.
We were right.
(30:41):
By the time Rabin came to powerit was his second term in office
in 1993, there was a majorityof Israelis, of Jewish Israelis,
supporting the Oslo Accord.
This is very, very important.
So, yes, we knew and we saidand we cried out loud that the
occupation was wrong and immoraland unjustified and that within
(31:07):
the occupation there arepractices happening, legal
practices, military practices,human behavior which is
corrupting us, corruptingIsraeli society.
We screened that and manypeople listened.
So Rabin was elected and giventhe mandate to go ahead with a
two state solution.
We know, we know.
(31:27):
Problem is that after theSecond Intifada and the rise of
right wing populism andNetanyahu's own charismatic and
destructive personality, we havebecome a minority.
We are a significant minority.
We might become a majorityagain.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
You might become a majority again, but it seems
like a very distant dream, andforgive me for using that word
again.
But is there a and maybe thisis the wrong term I wanted to
ask you is there a peace campstill alive in Israel?
Maybe it's not a peace camp,though Maybe we should
characterize it as somethingelse, something more practical.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Okay, so practical is exactly the point.
You know, when you keep talkingabout me dreaming, you're
thinking peace and love.
I'm not thinking peace and loveanymore.
I'm awake.
By the way, I'm awake frombefore the 7th of October.
I'm awake from the time when Isaw Arafat's successor, mahmoud
Abbas Abu Mazen, fail in everytest and drop every chance to
(32:33):
kick the Ossu agreement intolife again, and then Netanyahu
came and the whole thing, ofcourse, came to an end.
I'm not a dreamer in the senseof a practical territorial
solution and, on this, this isnot the peace camp.
Okay, peace camp is now 20,perhaps 25%.
We are going to march, by theway, tomorrow in Tel Aviv, if Mr
(32:56):
Ben Gver's police will not beatus up at the very beginning.
We are going to march in TelAviv for Jewish Arab peace and
there will be thousands IsraeliPalestinians, israeli Jews.
So maybe 20%, maybe less now,because some people are still so
shocked they're not sayingpeace anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
But you have to be heroic at this moment, don't you
?
To go to the street amid somuch anger and bloodshed and
talk about peace, but at thesame time, it's in so many ways
sensible.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Well, you know, if a policeman beats us up tomorrow
it's happened to me once beforeI just hope that my husband will
get him on his smartphonecamera.
That's the main outcome, whichis a good outcome because this
is still a democracy and thispoliceman at some point will be
punished Not right now.
Remember, these are emergencytimes for Israel as well as from
(34:01):
Gaza.
We are bombarded from, stillfrom Gaza.
There was a barrage of rocketsyesterday.
We are bombarded constantly byHezbollah in the north.
150,000 Israelis, by my lastcount, are evacuees, refugees in
their own countries.
The whole regions around theGaza and Lebanese border are
(34:23):
completely empty of civilians.
This is an emergency.
So, yes, I can be a dreamer andtalk about peace or territorial
hold, but the fact that 20% ofIsraelis today are still saying
this In agreement a two-statesolution, put love on one side,
(34:43):
but a two-state solution this Ifind hopeful, rather than its
opposite.
I think that by the time thingscalm down and they'll have to
come down at some point if theNetanyahu government is replaced
by a responsible center, center, center, right, center, left,
(35:04):
center, center government andthis is what the polls are
telling us now, with significantlikelihood, I think, then this
government will start tellingits people what needs to be done
, while accommodating theiremotions and their fears.
I can only wish Dana that therewould be an equivalent
(35:24):
Palestinian leadership out there.
We need patience.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
That was my last question to you.
Do you think, with all of yourvision and that 20% of Israelis
who I think, with a more centralgovernment leading them and
informing them, might become 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, and maybe
that's hopeful, but do you think, on the Palestinian side, that
(35:49):
you have those correspondingmoderates with vision?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Well, exactly, not exactly in a different way from
us.
The political system somehowshoots up the fanatics and keeps
the moderates down.
This was true also,unfortunately, for Israel in the
last decade, but it's doublytrue for the Palestinians.
There have been many moderatevoices.
Most of them are not thereanymore because they packed up
(36:16):
and went away when Arafat andhis tugs, if you forgive me came
into the West Bank in the 1990s.
That was another outcome of theOso agreement.
Among the Arafat and now AbuMazen Mahmoud Abbas circles,
there are a few moderates.
I don't think their voices areheard.
We will have to see what historybrings up in this lottery of
(36:41):
the next leader after MahmoudAbbas.
Who knows, maybe there would bea group of brave Palestinians
who would say and listen to this.
We hate the guts of Israel, butwe realize we have to exist
next door to Israel.
So we are moving on to aterritorial agreement.
And my father said if I canfinish with this quote, my
(37:07):
father said a real leader is notthe one who tells his or her
people what they want to hear.
A real leader tells her peoplewhat, deep in their hearts, they
know must be done.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Fania Oz Salzberger, and again I just wanted to say
that it's such an honor to talkto you and your article A Quick
Guide to Zionism in Hard Timesor why, in Spite of Everything,
I'm a Human Zionist.
Don't take my paraphrasing ofthat article or the way I led
Fania through the interview.
Go and read the article,because it tells you more about
(37:49):
the spirit and heart of Israelthan maybe we were able to
squeeze out in a podcastinterview, but it's so well
written and so thoughtful.
Fania, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Thank you, Dana, for the opportunity, and the article
is accessible free online.
Just google my name and theword Humanist, Zionist.
Toda Toda rabbalacha.
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
And that's our backstory.
This week, I wanted to bringyou Fania Oz-Saltzberger's
interview because I think it'sall about the future.
How do Israeli and Palestiniansdig themselves out of this
latest cycle of violence thatthreatens to drag us all into
the quicksand of hatred and warin the Middle East?
I'm Daniel Lewis.
Thanks for listening, share thepodcast and I'll talk to you
(38:40):
again soon.
You.
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