Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Intervista a Grossman

'Foreigners Cannot Understand the Israelis' Vulnerability'
In a SPIEGEL interview, novelist David Grossman discusses the vicious
cycle of fear and violence in Israel, the inability of foreigners to
understand the Israelis' sense of vulnerability and lack of confidence
in the country's future. He also expresses skepticism about Benjamin
Netanyahu's belief in peace.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Grossman, you're a very political person, but you have
avoided the Israeli-Arab conflict in your most recent books. Why?
Grossman: I felt that there was no way to write anything about this
conflict without falling into the trap of clich�s. There was no real
argument anymore. Everything had been said, by the left and by the
right. I didn't want these clich�s in my literature. More than that I
felt that because so much of our energy goes into the conflict we
don't have energy to deal with the real existential things of life:
being a father, being a mother, being a partner. For 10 years I
preferred to write about these topics in my novels, because for me
they are more important.
SPIEGEL: Is it at all possible to escape the depressing reality of the
Israeli-Arab conflict?
Grossman: It is possible for so many Israelis. In a strange way you
can live in this place and yet be totally detached from what happens.
You can live a very comfortable life here. You do not feel the
occupation, you do not see the Palestinians -- even if you live in the
occupied territories like the settlers. We have paved, in reality and
in our hearts, so many ways in order to detour and not confront
ourselves with this reality.
SPIEGEL: Why then did you return to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
in your new novel?
Grossman: For me it was impossible to fade out the reality of the
conflict forever. I wanted to find a way to integrate politics and my
inner life. When I started, I felt I must try to find a way to
integrate the outer sphere of reality with the private world -- to
show how the brutal reality penetrates the most intimate spaces.
SPIEGEL: The book is a very pessimistic one. At one point Ora, the
main character, says of Israel: "I know that this country doesn't have
a chance at all." Is that also your feeling?
Grossman: For me it is not a book about despair. It's a book about
life with all its facets, about the relationship between people and
the founding of a family. One of the strongest movements for me in the
book is how Ora rediscovers her youth love Ofer and how she gets him
out of a decades-old depression just by the power of her love.
SPIEGEL: At the same time, Ora's son Ofer appears to fall in the war.
Grossman: I don't write this explicitly, I leave the ending open. But
it's a very realistic fear, for every parent here in Israel.
SPIEGEL: Your second son Uri was killed during the Lebanon war in
2006. Is this book a kind of autobiography?
Grossman: Everything I write is autobiographical, even if I don't know
it when I start writing. However, I started writing it three years and
three months before my son Uri died in the war. Uri knew about the
book and when he came home from the army for the weekends, we used to
discuss what I was writing about. Every time, he asked me what new
things I had done to my characters in the meantime.
SPIEGEL: Did you change the manuscript after his death?
Grossman: No, the main thing is not what happened to me. The main
theme is the acuteness of life here in Israel. And even if a
catastrophe like the death of a son does not befall you, one feels
this immediate effect of political events on one's own personality.
Many deny this reality, they simply ignore it. But at some point you
are caught up by reality -- at the latest when your boys reach
puberty, and the shadow of the army starts to fall on them. An
international TV program once interviewed a young Israeli couple und
asked how many children they wanted to have. The beautiful bride said
immediately: "Three." And the interviewer asked: "Why three?" And she
said with a smile: "So that if one of them is killed in a war or in
terror we shall still have two left."
SPIEGEL: You, too, were a father of three, before your son Uri died.
Grossman: We did not have three children out of this calculation, but
I must admit that this thought had crossed my mind when we started
having children. The option of personal catastrophe is connected to
the special fate of this country. As I fear for my children, all my
life I lived with this fear of what happens if a catastrophe occurs in
Israel. The question of whether we shall exist here in the future,
whether we will still live here within a few decades time, prevails
subconsciously in the mind of most Israelis. We are living with
difficult and partly violent neighbors, most of whom don't want us
here. Some of them even threaten to eradicate us. I take them very
seriously.
SPIEGEL: You describe a feeling which people in Europe and the United
States don't usually know.
Grossman: From the outside Israel looks like a bully-militant fist.
Foreigners cannot really understand the vulnerability of people here
and their lack of confidence in the fact that Israel will still exist
in a few decades. I read that Germany plans the construction of its
roads several decades in advance, and that sounds perfectly normal.
But no sane Israeli would make such long-term plans. If I do it, I
feel a kind of pain in my heart as if I violated a taboo by allowing
myself quantities of future that are too great.
SPIEGEL: In your book, there is a generation gap: While Ora, the
mother, dreams of peace, Ofer wants to be a soldier and go to war.
Grossman: Yes, but as a young woman Ora was also part of this military
machine. From my experience, many young people going out of the army
suddenly start to see the reality as so much more complicated. Being
in the army at this age has very little to do with political
affiliation. This is why armies are built of young people: You can
easily manipulate them.
SPIEGEL: So the enthusiasm Ofer and his comrades feel is not a new
phenomenon?
Grossman: It existed from the very beginning. This ceremony of taking
your son to the army is part of the Israeli identity: Because of our
situation here, we are programmed from birth to be warriors. However,
after Ora brings her son to his army unit, she asks herself: How come
I am more loyal to the army and to the state than to my child? She
starts to rebel, flees to the north of Israel, in order not to be at
home when they want to deliver the news of her son's death. She simply
refuses to collaborate with this machinery of death.
SPIEGEL: In the Gaza war against the Islamistic Hamas at the beginning
of the year, the Israeli side only suffered very few victims. Was that
because of the Israeli army's brutal conduct?
Grossman: The whole situation of the occupation legitimizes brutality.
I remember the testimony of a soldier who was in Gaza in the first
intifada who said, "The moment I crossed the borderline I started to
feel like God. There was nothing that could have stopped me." It is an
irresistable temptation.
SPIEGEL: Especially when a war like this is religiously legitimized by
the chief military rabbi.
Grossman: Young people, especially, are susceptible to this. On the
other hand you must remember that for four years there was rocket
shooting from the Gaza Strip. There was ongoing provocation. Israel
had withdrawn its soldiers and settlers from Gaza. The Palestinians
could have used this partial sovereignty in order to build up their
land. Instead Hamas decided to bombard Israel.
SPIEGEL: You are known as a leftist peace activist, but you are
starting to sound like the average mainstream Israeli politician.
Grossman: Not at all. I thought it was a mistake of Ariel Sharon to
withdraw from Gaza unilaterally instead of coordinating it with the
moderate Palestinians. The unilateral withdrawal empowered the
narrative of Hamas, which says that Israel understands only power. On
the other hand already on the third day of the war, I wrote an article
for the front page of Haaretz calling for an immediate stop to the
Israeli attacks. I wrote that we Israelis must, for once, try to act
against the lethal logic of violence.
'The World Denies our Right to Retaliate in Principle'
SPIEGEL: But you were not against a military operation in general?
Grossman: All my life I have tried to prevent the use of military
power, but I also insist on Israel's right as a sovereign state to
defend itself when attacked. It is strange that Israel is the only
country that is immediately criticized when it retaliates after years
of rocket terror.
SPIEGEL: Perhaps because the scope and strength of this reaction were
disproportionate?
Grossman: The world denies our right to retaliate in principle. At the
same time, the government in Jerusalem conducts a war which leads to
many civilian victims. It is a tragedy that we believe we have to
constantly decide between total pacifism and monstrous violence. My
hope is that we shall find an adequate language for the complex
situation between us and the Palestinians.
SPIEGEL: The liberal-left Meretz party you support only received three
seats in Knesset during the last election. Do you sometimes feel a bit
lonely as a member of the Israeli peace movement?
Grossman: It is right that we currently don't have too many people (in
parliament). Our ideas are not very popular at the moment. It is very
hard to talk to Israelis about chances of peaceful co-existence.
SPIEGEL: Why?
Grossman: From the perspective of most Israelis our government tried
to make peace in 2000 at Camp David, but the Palestinians betrayed us.
Israelis failed to see their part in this mistake. I think both sides
were not mature enough for peace. They came to this peace as they come
to war.
SPIEGEL: Many Israelis consider President Barack Obama to be as na�ve
as Bill Clinton was back then at Camp David.
Grossman: We need a mediator from the outside. I think Obama is much
better equipped than his predecessor, George W. Bush, because of his
multi-focal look at reality. I wish Obama would stand up for his
vision. I wish he would impose on us the solution that we all know it
is inevitable.
SPIEGEL: Two states for two people -- even a right-wing prime minister
like Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be accepting this model now.
Grossman: Basically the left has succeeded. The majority of Israelis
now accepts the two-state solution, a concept people like Amos Oz, me
and others have advocated for almost 40 years. But I am skeptical
about Netanyahu. Before his speech at the Bar-Ilan-University ...
SPIEGEL: ... where he for the first time accepted the idea of a
Palestinian state ...
Grossman: ... he invited me for a talk. My impression is that he does
not really believe in the option of peace between us and the
Palestinians. He will do everything in order to create an illusion of
a peace process but will not fulfill it. His speech was merely paying
lip service to the Americans.
SPIEGEL: Many Israelis have become very cynical over the years. But
you haven't?
Grossman: If you become cynical, you later become apathic and then you
will not really do anything to change the situation. It may sound
terribly old-fashioned, but I believe in the good powers in people. We
Israelis have lived for more than 60 years in a reality of fear and
violence, of animosity and hatred. If there is a leader who will
enable us to explore these good parts within us, Israel could be a
much better place to live.
SPIEGEL: In the book, Ofer whispers into his mother's ear when he
leaves for the war: "If something happens to me, you have to leave
this country. You will having nothing left to lose." Have you ever
considered emigrating?
Grossman: After what happened to us, of course my wife and I asked
ourselves how different it could have been if had we left 25 years
ago. I have received many offers to work abroad. Israel is the only
place on earth where I am not a stranger. I regard it as a privilege
to take part in the creating of this country. In the Mishna ...
SPIEGEL: ... a commentary of the Hebrew Bible ...
Grossman: ... there is a phrase saying the one who has experienced a
miracle does not necessarily recognize it as a miracle. I recognize
the miracle: We Jews do have a state.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Grossman, we thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Martin Doerry and Christoph Schult.
-- 
http://bloggoanchio.splinder.com

 a chance at all."
ha pagato i diritti a Burg? :D