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Burg will not admit it, but from his point of
view the book he is launching now, to coincide with Hebrew Book Week, is a
book of prophecy. A book that is intended to vest the kingdom with prophecy.
For others, the book will not be easily definable. It contains deep thoughts
about Israel and Zionism,
a prolonged comparison between Israel
and Germany,
trenchant criticism of Eichmann's hanging, reflections on Judaism in the age
of globalization and memories from his father's house.
Yosef Burg, the refugee from Dresden, accords the book a certain
softness that is not to be found in the angry words of his son. True, toward
the end the optimist Avrum tries to transform his eulogy into a paean, but
the attempt is not entirely convincing. The Israel of "Defeating
Hitler" is a very harsh place. Brutal and imperialist, confrontational
and insular. A shallow place, thuggish, lacking spiritual inspiration.
I was outraged by the book. I saw it as a turning away of an
Israeli colleague from our shared Israeliness. I saw it as a one-dimensional
and unempathetic attack on the Israeli experience. Still, the dialogue with
Avrum was riveting. We got angry at each other and raised our voices at each
other and circled each other warily like two wounded gladiators in the arena.
You can't take away from Avrum what he has. You can't take away the education
or the articulateness or the ability to touch truly painful places. Maybe
that's why he is so infuriating. Friend and predator; brother and deserter.
Avrum Burg, I read your new book, "Defeating
Hitler," as a parting from Zionism. Am I wrong? Are you still a Zionist?
"I am a human being, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli.
Zionism was an instrument to move me from the Jewish state of being to the
Israeli state of being. I think it was Ben-Gurion who said that the Zionist
movement was the scaffolding to build the home, and that after the state's
establishment it should be dismantled."
So you confirm that you are no longer a Zionist?
"Already at the First Zionist Congress, Herzl's Zionism
was victorious over the Zionism of Ahad Ha'am. I think that the 21st century
should be the century of Ahad Ha'am. We have to leave Herzl behind and move
to Ahad Ha'am."
Does this mean that you no longer find the notion of a
Jewish state acceptable?
"It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as
a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's
dynamite."
And a Jewish-democratic state?
"People find this very comfortable. It's lovely. It's
schmaltzy. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It gives a sense of fullness. But
'Jewish-democratic' is nitroglycerine."
We have to change the national anthem?
"The anthem is a symbol. I would be ready to buy into a
reality in which everything is fine and only the anthem is screwed-up."
Do we have to amend the Law of Return?
"We have to open the discussion. The Law of Return is an
apologetic law. It is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to
define my identity."
Should the Jewish Agency be dismantled?
"Back when I was chairman of the Jewish Agency, I
suggested changing its name from the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel
to the Jewish Agency for Israeli Society. There is room for philanthropic
tools. But at the center of its experience it have to deal with all of Israel's
citizens, including the Arabs."
You write in your book that if Zionism is catastrophic
Zionism, then you are not only post-Zionist but anti-Zionist. And I say that
since the 1940s, the catastrophic element has been integral to Zionism. It
follows that you are anti-Zionist.
"Ahad Ha'am made the charge against Herzl that his whole
Zionism had its source in anti-Semitism. He thought of something else, of Israel as a
spiritual center - the Ahad Ha'am line has not died, and now its time has
come. Our confrontational Zionism vis-a-vis the world is disastrous."
But it's not just the Zionist issue. Your book is
anti-Israeli, in the deepest sense. It is a book from which loathing of
Israeliness emanates.
"When I was a boy I was a Jew. In the language prevalent
here: a Jew-boy. I attended a heder [religious school]. I was taught by
former yeshiva students. After that, for most of my life I was an Israeli.
Language, signs, smells, tastes, places. Everything. Today that is not enough
for me. In my situation today, I am beyond Israeli. Of the three identities
that form me - human, Jewish and Israeli - I feel that the Israeli element
deprives the other two."
On the face of it, your position is conciliatory and
humanistic. But out of that approach you develop a very harsh attitude toward
Israeliness and Israelis. You say terrible things about us.
"I think that I have written a book of love. Love hurts.
If I were writing about Nicaragua,
I wouldn't care. But I am coming from a place of tremendous pain. I see my
love withering before my eyes. I see my society and the place I was raised in
and my home being destroyed."
Love? You write that Israelis understand only force. If
someone were to write that Arabs understand only force or that the Turkmen
understand only force, he would immediately be condemned as a racist. And
rightly.
"You can't take one sentence and say that this is the
whole book."
It's not just one sentence. It is repeated. You say that
we have force, a great deal of force and only force. You say that Israel is a
Zionist ghetto, an imperialistic, brutish place that believes only in itself.
"Look at the Lebanon War. The people returned
from the field of battle. There were certain achievements, there were certain
failures, things were revealed. You would expect people in the mainstream and
even on the right to understand that when the IDF is allowed to win, it
doesn't win. That force is not a solution. But then comes Gaza,
and what is the Gaza
discourse? We will smash them, we will erase them. Nothing has sunk in.
Nothing. And it's not just between nation and nation. Look at the relations
between people. Listen to the personal conversation. The graph of violence on
the roads, the discourse of the battered women. Look at the mirror of Israel's
face."
What you are saying is that the problem is not just the
occupation. In your eyes, Israel
as a whole is some sort of horrible mutation.
"The occupation is a very small part of it. Israel is a
frightened society. To look for the source of the obsession with force and to
uproot it, you have to deal with the fears. And the meta-fear, the primal
fear is the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust."
That is the book's thesis. You are not the first to
propose it, but you formulate it very acutely. We are psychic cripples, you
claim. We are gripped by dread and fear and make use of force because Hitler
caused us deep psychic damage.
"Yes."
Well, I will counter by saying that your description is
distorted. It's not as though we are living in Iceland and imagining that we are
surrounded by Nazis who actually disappeared 60 years ago. We are surrounded
by genuine threats. We are one of the most threatened countries in the world.
"The true Israeli rift today is between those who
believe and those who are afraid. The great victory of the Israeli right in
the struggle for the Israeli political soul lies in the way it has imbued it
almost totally with absolute paranoia. I accept that there are difficulties.
But are they absolute? Is every enemy Auschwitz?
Is Hamas a scourge?"
You are patronizing and supercilious, Avrum. You have no
empathy for Israelis. You treat the Israeli Jew as a paranoid. But as the
cliche goes, some paranoids really are persecuted. On the day we are
speaking, Ahmadinejad is saying that our days are numbered. He promises to
eradicate us. No, he is not Hitler. But he is also not a mirage. He is a true
threat. He is the real world - a world you ignore.
"I say that as of this moment, Israel is a
state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions. And it's not just a
theoretical question. Would our ability to cope with Iran not be much better if we renewed in Israel the
ability to trust the world? Would it not be more right if we didn't deal with
the problem on our own, but rather as part of a world alignment beginning
with the Christian churches, going on to the governments and finally the
armies?
"Instead, we say we do not trust the world, they will
abandon us, and here's Chamberlain returning from Munich with the black umbrella and we will
bomb them alone."
In your book we are not only victims of the Nazis. In your
book we are almost Judeo-Nazis. You are careful. You do not actually say that
Israel is Nazi Germany. But
you come very close. You say that Israel
is pre-Nazi Germany.
Israel is Germany up to
the Nazis.
"Yes. I started the book from the saddest place. As
mourning, but for the loss of Israel.
During most of the writing the book's title was 'Hitler Won.' I was sure it
was finished. But slowly I discovered the layer of not everything being lost.
And I discovered my father as a representative of German Jewry that was ahead
of its time. These two themes nourished the book from beginning to end. In
the end I am an optimistic person, and the end of the book is also optimistic."
The end may be optimistic, but throughout its entire
course the book repeatedly equates Israel
with Germany.
Is that really justified? Is there sufficient basis for the Israel-Germany
analogy?
"It is not an exact science, but I will describe to you
some of the elements that go into the stew: a great sense of national insult;
a feeling that the world has rejected us; unexplained losses in wars. And, as
a result, the centrality of militarism in our identity. The place of reserve
officers in society. The number of armed Israelis in the streets. Where is
this swarm of armed people going? The expressions hurled publicly: 'Arabs
out.'"
What you are actually claiming is that we have viruses of
Nazism within us.
"The term 'Nazism' is extremely charged."
Avrum Burg writes in his new book: "It is sometimes
difficult for me to distinguish between the primeval National-Socialism and
some national cultural doctrines of the here-and-now."
"There is a difference between saying 'Nazi' and saying
'National-Socialist.' Nazi is an ultimate icon; in us it goes to final and
terminal places."
OK, we will leave Nazism. Are you concerned about a
fascist debacle in Israel?
"I think it is already here."
Do you really believe that the racist slogans which,
appallingly, do indeed appear on the stone walks in Jerusalem
are akin to the slogans of the 1930s in Germany?
"I see that we are not weeding out those utterances with
all our might. And I hear voices coming out of Sderot .... We will destroy
and kill and expel. And there is a transferist discourse in the government
.... We have crossed so many red lines in the past few years. And then you
ask yourself what the next red lines that we cross will be."
In the book you both ask and answer. "I feel very
strongly," you write, "that there is a very good chance that a
future Knesset in Israel
... will prohibit sexual relations with Arabs, use administrative means to
prevent Arabs from employing Jewish cleaning ladies and workers ... like the Nuremberg Laws ... All
this will happen, and is already happening." Didn't you get carried
away, Avrum?
"When I was Speaker of the Knesset, I heard people
talking. I conducted in-depth conversations with members from all parts of
the House. I heard people of peace say -I want peace because I hate Arabs and
can't stand to look at them and can't tolerate them, - and I heard people on
the right use Kahanist language. Kahanism [referring to the ultranational
doctrine of Rabbi Meir Kahane] is in the Knesset. It was disqualified as a
party, but it constitutes 10 and maybe 15 and maybe even 20 percent of the
Jewish discourse in the Knesset. These matters are far from simple. These are
roiling waters."
I will tell you frankly. I think we have serious moral and
psychological problems. But I think that the comparison with Germany on
the eve of the rise of Nazism to power is baseless. One example: There is a
problem with the place of the army in our lives and with the place of the
generals in our politics and in the relations between the political echelon
and the army. But you are likening Israeli militarism to German militarism,
and that is a false comparison. You describe Israel
as a Prussian Sparta living by the sword, and
that is not the Israel
I see outside. Certainly not in 2007.
"I envy your ability to read the situation as you read
it. I very much envy you. But I think we are a society that in its feelings
lives by the sword .... It is not by chance that I make the comparison with Germany, because our feeling that we are
obliged to live by the sword stems from Germany. What they deprived us of
in the 12 years of Nazism necessitates a very large sword. Look at the fence.
The separation fence is a fence against paranoia. And it was born in my
milieu. In my school of thought. With my own Haim Ramon. What is the thinking
here? That I will erect a big wall and the problem will be solved because I
will not see them. You know, the Labor movement always saw the historical
context and represented a culture of dialogue, but here we have terrible
pettiness of soul. The fence physically demarcates the end of Europe. It says that this is where Europe
ends. It says that you are the forward post of Europe
and the fence separates you from the barbarians. Like the Roman Wall. Like
the Wall of China.
But that is so pathetic. And it is a bill of divorce from the vision of
integration. There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane. And it
comes just at a time when Europe itself, and
the world with it, has made such an impressive advance in internalizing the
lessons of the Holocaust and has fomented a great advance in the normative
behavior of nations."
The truth is that you are a salient Europist. You live in
Nataf but you are all Brussels.
The prophet of Brussels.
"Completely. Completely. I see the European Union as a
biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is
amazing. It is completely Jewish."
And this admiration you show for Europe
is not accidental. Because one of the riveting things in your book is that
the sabra Avrum Burg turns his back on being sabra and connects very deeply
with some sort of yekke [a reference to Jews of German origin] romanticism.
Zionist Israel
comes across as a vulgar baron in the book, whereas German Jewry is the ideal
and the paragon.
"You are dichotomous, Ari, and I am inclusive. You slice
off and I try to contain. Therefore I do not say that I am turning my back on
being sabra but that I am turning in a different direction. And that is true.
Completely true."
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I have a bone to pick with this romanticism.
You describe a thousand wonderful years of German Jewry. In large measure
you view German Jewry as a model. But it ends in Auschwitz,
Avrum. It leads to Auschwitz. Your yekke
romanticism is understandable and attractive, but it lies.
"Is there a well-grounded romanticism? Is your Israeli
romanticism grounded?"
My Israeliness is not romantic. On the contrary: It is
cruel. It stems from understanding necessity. And you blur the necessity.
Emotionally, you prefer the move from Dresden
to Manhattan
over coping with the Jewish-Israeli fate.
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"We do
not want to accept this, but the existence of the Diaspora dates from the
beginnings of our history. Abraham discovers God outside the borders of the
Land. Jacob leads tribes to outside the borders. The tribes become a people
outside the borders. The Torah is given outside the borders. As Israelis
and Zionists, we ignored this completely. We rejected the Diaspora. But I
maintain that just as there was something astonishing about German Jewry,
in America,
too, they also created the potential for something astonishing. They
created a situation in which the goy can be my father and my mother and my
son and my partner. The goy there is not hostile but embracing. And as a
result, what emerges is a Jewish experience of integration, not separation.
Not segregation. I find those things lacking here. Here the goy is what he
was in the ghetto: confrontational and hostile."
There really is a deep anti-Zionist pattern in you.
Emotionally, you are with German Jewry and American Jewry. They excite you,
thrill you, and by comparison you find the Zionist option crude and
spiritually meager. It broadens neither the heart nor the soul.
"Yes, yes. The Israeli reality is not exciting. People
are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall.
Ask your friends if they are certain their children will live here. How
many will say yes? At most 50 percent. In other words, the Israeli elite
has already parted with this place. And without an elite there is no
nation."
You are saying that we are suffocating here for lack of
spirit.
"Totally. We are already dead. We haven't received the
news yet, but we are dead. It doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work."
And you see in American Jewry the spiritual dimension
and the cultural ferment that you don't find here.
"Certainly. There is no important Jewish writing in Israel.
There is important Jewish writing in the United States. There is no one
to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part - I feel no
sense of belonging to it. The secular community - I am not part of it,
either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don't
understand me, either. You are stuck at a chauvinist national
extremity."
That is not completely accurate. I am aware of the
Jewish richness you are talking about. But I am also aware that the basic
Zionist analysis was correct. Without Israel there is no future for a
non-Orthodox Jewish civilization.
"Take the purest Israeliness there is. Moshe Dayan,
for example. And we will shed all the Avrums from him. Totally immaculate
Israeliness. No nudniks. No effete types. Nothing. Are you sure that this
living-in-order-to-live will endure? Take on the other hand the 'kites.'
Martin Buber, George Steiner. You say that these [ethereal] kites will not
get anywhere. But my historical experience tells me that these kites get
farther than the troopers."
You are actually preparing tools for exile.
"I have been living with them from the day I was born.
What is it when I say in prayer that because of our sins we were exiled
from our land? In Jewish history the spiritual existence is eternal and the
political existence is temporary."
In this sense, you are essentially non-Zionist. Because
the energy needed to establish and maintain this place is tremendous, and
you are saying that we must not give our all to this place.
"There is no Israeli whole. There is a Jewish whole.
The Israeli is a half-Jew. Judaism always prepared alternatives. The
strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. It built an
enterprise here whose most important sections are an illusion. Do you
really think that some sort of floating secular Tel Aviv-type post-kibbutz
entity will [continue to] exist here? Never. Israeliness has only body; it
doesn't have soul. At most, remnants of soul. You are already dead
spiritually, Ari. You have only an Israeli body. If you go on like this,
you will no longer be."
Israeliness is far richer, Avrum. It has energy and
vibrancy and diversity and productivity. But you fled from Israeliness. You
defected from Israeliness. You were an Israeli. You were more Israeli than
I was. But no more.
"No more. I think that the 'non-Israeli' is not an
alternative to the whole Jewish existence of two thousand years that I am
talking about. That is why I wrote this book. Because I cannot leave this
world while lying to myself. I told you: There is no Jewish existence
without a narrative. There is no such thing. And here there is certainly no
narrative. But what is even graver is that there are no forces that will
draw out a narrative from within.
"Accordingly, I am going to the world and to Judaism.
Because the Jew is the first postmodernist, the Jew is the first
globalist."
You really are a globalist now. You really are going out
to the world. You have taken a French passport, and as a French citizen you
voted in the French presidential elections.
"I have already declared: I am a citizen of the world.
This is my hierarchy of identities: citizen of the world, afterward Jew and
only after that Israeli. I feel a weighty responsibility for the peace of
the world. And Sarkozy is in my eyes a threat to world peace. That is why I
went to vote against him."
Are you French?
"In many senses I am European. And from my point of
view, Israel is part of Europe."
But it isn't. Not yet. And you are an Israeli public
figure who is taking part in the French presidential elections as a
Frenchman. That is a far-reaching act. A pre-Zionist Jewish act. Something
that neither an Englishman or a Dutchman would do.
"True. It is completely Jewish. I am moving forward to
the Jewish condition."
Do you recommend that every Israeli take out a foreign
passport?
"Whoever can."
But in this, in this too, you are dismantling the
Israeli mutual surety. You are playing with your multiple passports and
your multiple identities, which is a course not available to many others.
You are dismantling something very basic.
"Those are your fears, Ari. I suggest that you not be
afraid. That is what I say in the book. I propose that we stop being
afraid."
But you are not only the book, Avrum. You are also the
person outside the book. And there is a contradiction between the purism of
the man who wrote the book and the political life you lived here.
"A terrible question. Terrible. And it's true. For
some of those years I lived a lie. For many years I was not myself. At the
outset of my political path I had the energy of the struggle for religion
and state and the struggle for peace. I had the precise wind of [the late
Prof. Yeshayahu] Leibowitz in my sails. Those were my years of honesty.
That was me. But afterward, for long years I was a Mapainik [Mapai,
forerunner of the Labor Party]. I was there just to be. And I was no longer
me. I was false to the tenets."
And now that you are free of the limitations of
politics, you are going all the way with the Leibowitz in you. You describe
the targeted assassinations as acts of murder. You are happy that your
mother's grandson is not a fighter pilot who kills innocent people. You
describe the occupation as an Israeli Anschluss. An Israeli Anschluss?
"That is what we are doing there. What do you want me
to say about what we are doing there? That it's humanism? The Red
Cross?"
And the targeted assassinations are murder?
"Some of them, certainly."
We are being dragged into carrying out war crimes?
"I have no other way to see it. Especially if there is
no horizon of dialogue. The Israelis are very calm. One more Arab, one less
Arab. Ya'allah, it's alright. But in the end, the pile grows high. The
number of innocent people is so large that it can no longer be contained.
And then our explosion and their explosion and the world's will be
infinite. I see it happening before my eyes. I see the pile of Palestinian
bodies crossing the wall we erected so as not to see it."
And you are not only Leibowitz. You are also Gandhi. You
say that the right reaction to the Holocaust was not Anielewicz [Mordechai
Anielewicz, commander of the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising] but Gandhi.
"I believe in the doctrine of nonviolence. I do not
think that to believe in nonviolence is to be a patsy. In my eyes, Gandhi
is as Jewish as there is. He embodies a very ancient Jewish approach. Like
Yochanan ben Zakkai, who asked for Yavneh and its sages. Not Jerusalem, not the Temple, not sovereignty: Yavneh and its
sages."
And your Gandhiist approach has a political expression:
You believe Israel
should be relieved of nuclear weapons.
"Of course, of course. The day the Bomb is dismantled
will be the most important day in Israel's history. It will be
the day on which we get such a good deal with the other side that we will
no longer need the Bomb. That has to be our ambition."
Avrum, your book is that of a man of peace. Almost a
pacifist. How did it happen that when a man of peace like you left politics
you tried to buy from the government a factory that manufactures tank
parts?
"I am a businessman. I deal with companies. With
bringing them back to health. Privatizations. I like this job and I am also
good at it. One of my main projects was Ashot Industries in Ashkelon, 40 percent of which manufactures arms. My
intention was to close down that production line and expand Ashot's
involvement in the world of civil aviation. I will not be responsible for
manufacturing arms for one day. The challenge I saw was to take a place that
makes spears and beat them into plowshares."
That deal raised serious questions. It led to an
investigation by the state comptroller and by the police. But I don't want
to ask about its criminal aspect, because the case was closed and you were
exonerated. I want to ask how it can be that the first thing a politician
who presented himself as an anti-Thatcherite and as a sworn enemy of
privatization did after leaving politics was to try to earn a huge personal
profit from privatization.
"I set out to do the most anti-Thatcherite thing. The
state sold badly but I wanted to buy well. The state wronged the workers
and I wanted to ensure their rights. I wanted to show a different model of
partnership between employees and owners. So I think it is unjust that the
State of Israel took this deal away from me. When I left politics, the
temptations were great. I could have sat on this board or that board.
People wanted me to open doors and close doors. But I said no. I went to
the old [type of] industry. To the periphery. I am now producing corn in
Hatzor Haglilit. Show me another person like me who emerged from politics
and is doing work like this. I am not sitting in Kiryat Atidim [a high-tech
industrial zone]. I am not sitting in the slick places. I am sweating my
guts out every month to pay my 600 employees. Their salary."
It's not exactly right that you decided not to open
doors or close doors. In your joint venture with businessman David Appel
you were supposed to open doors so he could reincarnate the 'Greek Island'
tourist project in southern Italy.
"Nothing came of that project. Not even a business
opportunity. But if something had come of it - so what? Because 20 people
don't like David he is unacceptable? Because terrible things are said about
him in the judicial system but nothing is proved? That is violence I cannot
tolerate. It is simply an executioner's approach. Israeliness as
executioner, and we really love it - it sells papers."
Are the allegations against you concerning Ashot
Industries and David Appel part of an Israeli executioner's approach?
"There is a gallows society here. First we'll hang you
and when you breathe your last breath we will clarify why it was your last.
How it left your body. We are now living in the equivalent of the 1950s in America. In
a McCarthyite era. The assault on corruption is McCarthyism. It is
important that we set boundaries. In the past we swiped things from the
chicken coop, and today that is impossible. Once we asked girls, When you
say no, what do you mean? - and today sexual harassment is forbidden. But
the way it is being done - the style, the vulgarity, the populism, the
superficiality. The inability of those who are under attack to fight back
properly."
You do know how to fight back. For example, Salai
Meridor [former Jewish Agency chairman] decides that there is no
justification for him and you to enjoy the baseless privilege of a service
car with a chauffeur for life, and you go to court to fight for that
privilege with all your might.
"As a former chairman of the Jewish Agency, I have
pension rights just as you have pension rights. One day they are suddenly
gone. Out of the blue. Think that part of your pension is to receive
Haaretz free and one day Amos Schocken [the publisher] suddenly takes it
away. Wouldn't you fight? Wouldn't you go to the workers' committee?
"But every person is allowed to fight when something
is taken from him - only Avrum is not allowed. Why? Because. This whole
thing is such a pittance in money terms that it doesn't even exist. But the
level of principle sent me up the wall."
We're talking about NIS 200,000. And about your behavior,
which the judge found disgraceful. And about the fact that even though you
talk high and mighty about morals, you don't see the moral flaw in the fact
that 10 years after leaving the Jewish Agency you are driving on your
business trips throughout the country with a Jewish Agency chauffeur
driving you everywhere. On top of which, today you are so alienated from
everything the Jewish Agency stands for.
"I have something to say about what the judge said.
But I will not counterattack. I will not correct violence with violence. We
are talking about a person's basic right. About a pension right."
Was it worth it? What will remain engraved in people's
memory is that Salai Meridor was fair and modest, and Avrum Burg was a
hedonist who coveted benefits.
"What remains of all this is that I am at peace with
myself. Everyone who feels good with secret violence or hidden knifing or
with being an open or covert Sicarius [name given to Second Temple Jews who
used a dagger, sicarius, to dispose of collaborators with Rome] - good luck
to him! Well and good. I am not going to educate the world. What's
important for me is that I am at harmony with myself."
But there is a question mark here which has accompanied
you all along. You speak so impressively. Not only articulately but
morally. And now you have written a book that is all morality. But your
activity in the world is different. In political life you were sophisticated,
cagy and snakelike, and in the business world, too, you are far from being
a saint. The disparity between your language and your deeds is disturbing.
"The disparity is in the eye of the beholder. I do not
ask myself how Ari Shavit sees me. I am finished with the world in which I
care what you think of me. I live in a world in which I care what I think
about me. For many years I lived with the Moloch of what people would say.
That Moloch led me to wrong places. To places of a very large gap between
the inner me and the outer me. Today I live with my truth."
Maybe the things connect. You really are a man of peace
who rejects the militarist, nationalist, brute-force Israeli. But when you
reconnect to the Jew, you are connecting not only to the spiritual Jew but
also to the Jew of money.
"True. Life is not just to be a pioneer with a hoe and
a bold fighter at Lion's Gate. Life is also to be a merchant in Warsaw.
Unequivocally, that is a richer totality in life."
Still, you haven't given up the political. You are a
close friend of Prime Minister Olmert. Do you continue to support him even
after the Second Lebanon
War?
"The story of Ehud Olmert is a terribly great tragedy.
Of everyone in the generation that is slightly older than me, he is the
most talented. The most experienced. There is a great fondness between us.
I like him very much. He is one of the most humane people and most moral
people in regard to relations between people, and in terms of his relations
with his family. But his ability to translate into practical terms what he
has is impossible because of the declaration of the war. The Bush-like
notion that war is the first option is a mistake that colors all of
Olmert's other essential qualities. I still pray that he will correct this
by means of a great political drama. Hamas or Syria or the Saudi initiative.
I tell him not to entrench himself in the mistake. It is still possible for
a great healing to come out of the blunder."
Who do you support in the Labor Party primaries?
"Barak."
Why?
"He has already proved once that he is ready to go
beyond the Israeli Rubicon. And there will be Rubicons to cross here. His
ability to do that is very important to me."
Do you see yourself returning to politics?
"An open question. Only in 2010 will a new political
era begin in Israel.
After the Olmert-Barak-Bibi [Netanyahu] generation comes to its end, the
turn will come of a new generation who will come from the economy, the
academy, the arts. Maybe then there will be a place for me."
A place in the Prime Minister's Bureau?
"Once I wanted very much to be prime minister. It
burned like fire in my bones. I didn't know what I wanted to do there, but
I wanted terribly to be there. Today I say that I have lot of marathons to
run before that can happen."
But you are in the marathon?
"All my life."
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