The Land of Oz

AMOS OZ has fought in two Israeli wars, in 1967 and 1973. Now, at age 43, he is fighting again--this time for peace. It is, he says, his most painful battle, because his opponents are his fellow Israelis.

Oz's latest book, In the Land of Israel, accuses his country of immorality in typically blunt Israeli fashion. By piecing together a variety of extremist Israeli viewpoints, Oz debunks the myth of Israeli unanimity and crafts his vision for Israel in literary form. The series of interviews recorded in this book shows a wide range of Israeli public opinion: the anti-war movement, the anti-Zionists, the Arab nationalists, and Palestinians, the secular Jews, and the ultra-conservative Gush Emunim.

The solution Oz offers to the dilemma Israel faces is an idealistic pluralism, the open admission and consideration of all dissenting views. It is the cacophony of public opinion in which Oz places hope for Israel's future. Even the structure of the book reflects the variety and contradictions in which he delights. As he said at a forum at Harvard on November 9, "It is better to be severely divided than artificially united."

In keeping with his apotheosis of diversity, Oz never claims to present an objective account of Israeli public opinion. In an interview with The Crimson last week, Oz said that his purpose is not to paint a "true" or "representative" picture. "I went to the extremes because I have decided to be the ideological link, and because it is important to take all different factions seriously," he added.

This is the strength of the book. It presents a simple truth which Israel has tried to hide from the rest of the world: that disagreement exists over the war in Lebanon, over the annexation of territory, over the fate of the PLO, and, more basically, over the justification of the existence of a pre-Messianic Jewish state. Oz ruthlessly removes any illusions about Israeli unity.

THE WEARINESS of the Israeli public at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon two summers ago soon turned into outright opposition among some factions. Even the excuses which then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his ultra-religious coalition offered for the invasion at the time--the need to clear out the PLO-infested areas on the Israeli-Lebanon border to ensure safety for Northern Israeli communities--seemed weak to a country accustomed to almost daily serious threats to its existence.

In Oz's opinion, Lebanon was a decisive turning point for Israelis. It fueled long standing antagonisms between the religious and the secular, between the hawks and the doves, necessitating a re-definition of the goals of the Israeli state. Israel could no longer pretend to be entirely unified, as groups such as Oz's Peace Now movement sponsored anti-war demonstrations in the capital. Less obvious but equally important was the widespread disappointment with the image of Israel the aggressor. Israelis could blame the Arabs for all six previous Arab-Israeli wars, and could justify the bloodshed as the defense of Israel's very existence. The situation in Lebanon is less obvious, and the result is open dissension.

In Oz's view, this dissension is a positive development. In last week's forum, Oz said of the increasing debate over the troops in Lebanon, "There is no simple solution or way out right now...I'm not sure I want to find a way out."

Oz is not the first to withhold applause for Israel's every aggressive move. However, the brilliance of his book is the reasoning behind it. On the surface, Oz's goals are simple and direct: Israel out of Lebanon, now. No more annexation, and full-scale peace with her neighbors. Lest his demands begin to sound like as Israeli version of the American anti-Vietnam sentiment of the 60s, Oz couches his goal in a sophisticated humanitarian vision.

Through a character whom Oz names simply "Z," he lays out the scene: Israel's sacred reputation has never been marred beyond repair. Oz cheers this fall from grace:

So now maybe we've finished once and for all with that crap about the Jewish monopoly on morality, about the moral lesson of the Holocaust and the persecutions, about the Jews, who were supposed to have emerged from the gas chambers pure and good.

This should be a relief to Z, Oz says.

...we could have put that behind us and by now become a normal nation with prissy values with humanistic neighborly relations with Iraq and Egypt, and with a slight criminal record--just like everybody else...What's so terrible about being a civilized people, respectable, with a slight criminal past?

The follow-up question is, what is a respectable civilized people, anymore? For "civilized," Oz places Israel somewhere on the continuum between Hitler and the Messiah." Israel is a kind of "intermission" between the drama played out at Hitler's behest and the morality play with the Messiah at center stage. The omnipresence of these two figures allows Israel, in Oz's opinion, some leeway in its search to define what "civilized" means to Israelis. Oz hints at his own definition in an interview, coolly allowing that "wars are only just when fought for survival and freedom."

However, Oz's overriding belief in diversity of opinion gives him license to wrestle with his own concept of "civilized." Part of being civilized, Oz says, is recognizing the legitimacy of other people's nationalist movements. On this point, Oz turns to the editor of AlFajr (The Arab Dawn), a daily East Jerusalem newspaper. Oz argues cogently that to ignore Arab nationalism would be foolhardy.

You are our destiny: We are your destiny:...There's nothing we can do about it: here in this land we are welded together, Jews and Arabs, forever."

Later, Oz says that "there is no copyright law for national experience, and one cannot sue that Palestinian national movement for plagiarism."

Oz aggressively responds to and challenges his compatriots' assertions. For instance, to his friend Z. Oz quips sarcastically that the power which Israel has exhibited may cause the world to "fear her," rather than "feel sorry" for her. "Congratulations," Oz adds sardonically. To the world at large, he defends the vision of Zionism and the necessity for a Jewish state "of our own." In the same breath, the realist impulse in Oz which led him to admit Israel's immorality permits him to suggest that the Zionist dream has soured, its limits reached. Now the struggle begins anew to find the direction for the Jewish state.

WHY HAVE THE great Zionist hopes of Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizman been tainted with so much bloodshed? In utilitarian terms, has the end justified the means? Here, Oz lets another bombshell drop. This time, it is calculated to offend, for he dabbles in the realm of the irrational--religion. Israelis are different from Jews in the rest of the world, he argues. The Diaspora is the "museum civilization." If any spiritual existence remains at all, he says, it has degenerated into the interpretation of the meaning of the interpretations, "until finally all that is left is to polish the artifacts in their cases." Not so for Israelis who have the legacy of Zionism. Now that too is becoming a "museum piece." The kibbutzim--the fertile land where desert once was--and the passionate spirit which has characterized the Israeli existence are all creatures of "this new, nonreligious Judaism." Over time, Zionism has lost its creative spirit. It is time for a new experiment and new creations. The only way to assure perpetual creativity is continual debate grounded in the well-worn concept of pluralism.

In person, Amos Oz will tell you that he has no ambitions to be a "political guerrilla." He has always operated on the margins, keeping the government on its toes. "I couldn't think of myself as a politician sitting at endless sessions," Oz says in his soft-spoken manner. As a self-proclaimed idealist, he has rarely if ever had to face the realities of political responsibility.

Nevertheless, Oz's Peace Now movement and his book show a shrewd political sense. Oz has maneuvered into an untouchable position by constructing a platform whose legitimacy rests in the opportunity for constant criticism: he even encourages constructive potshots at his pluralist theory. Nevertheless, those of us with a skeptical bent might scoff at an idealistic vision. Oz says, "I would like very much to live in world where there are one hundred different civilizations with any cultural and religious traditions and not a single nation-state." No one can deny Oz the opportunity to hope for such a time and place, and such dreams have helped to shape the world. However, the power of such idealism is lost without a firm grounding in reality. The journalist/sociologist must remember this or his pluralistic and peaceful vision will remain a fantasy, a land of Oz, rather than setting the stage for a new and improved land of Israel.