Novelists from Israel

"Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: 'Yids, go back to Palestine,' so we came back to Palestine, and now the worldatlarge [sic] shouts at us: 'Yids, get out of Palestine.'"

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim. Now such a clash between right claims can be resolved in one of two manners. There's the Shakespeare tradition of resolving a tragedy with the stage hewed with dead bodies and justice of sorts prevails. But there is also the Chekhov tradition. In the conclusion of the tragedy by Chekhov, everyone is disappointed, disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, but alive. And my colleagues and I have been working, trying...not to find the sentimental happy ending, a brotherly love, a sudden honeymoon to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy, but a Chekhovian ending, which means clenched teeth compromise."

"The minute we leave south Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly no longer will be relevant when Israel returns to her internationally recognized northern border."

"The [political] left are people with an imagination and the right are those without an imagination."

"The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don't really want, in order to impress people they don't really like."

"America is too large and too abstract to generalize about."

"The Hebrew writers who I feel should be more widely appreciated my own mentors, I suppose-are Micha Berdyczewski, Yosef Haim Brenner, and, of course, Shmuel Yosef Agnon. (HC: And on the world scene?) AO: That's too large an order. (HC: Well, whom of those you have read recently have you found impressive?) AO: The South Africans: Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and André Brink."

"[M]uch like Israel itself, this is a novel about great dreams, about great expectations, about bigger-than-life visions and, indeed, about the morning after and the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true. (about Black Box)"

"I am a great believer in compromising. I think the only alternative to compromising is fight to the death on any front, on any level."

"I don't believe in magnanimous dreams coming true. Every fulfillment of a dream or of an ambition is bound, destined, to be partial, especially because Israel was founded on such a shaky coalition of conflicting and contradicting dreams, master plans and visions. There was no way they all could come true. The other reason, of course, is that since its creation and even since earlier, Israel has been stuck with a nasty, violent conflict with its Arab neighbors. And I don't think an atmosphere of a constant, violent, hateful conflict is the right atmosphere to create the most egalitarian and just society in the world."

"I'd fight again and again if it would be a matter of life and death for the nation. I would not fight, though, for any other cause. I would not fight for resources. I'd not fight for interests. When it comes to life and death, I have always believed that there is one thing in this world which is more ugly, more sordid, than using violence. And this thing is giving in to violence. In this respect, I am a peacenik not a pacifist. And the Israeli Peace Now movement is clearly not a Make Love Not War movement - not one of those."

"[H]aving fought a war, you will never be the same human being. Having shot at people, having been shot at by total strangers, you will never be the same again."

"To me, reconciliation means a political settlement. If I had to entitle my vision vis a vis the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular, I would say make peace not love. The name of the game for Israelis and for Palestinians, as I see it, is a fair and decent and painful divorce rather than a honeymoon bed together. I think Israelis and Palestinians should separate land and assets, divide the land between the two nations and live in peace like two ex people rather than try to reconcile in the way of living together. The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not a family dispute. It's a dispute between two families."

"We have been through many wars in our life. We have been through fighting. I've been on the battlefield myself. This combination of gas and Jewish state certainly hits a chord and touches a nerve. And what's moreover, a German-manufactured gas aimed at Jews in the Jewish state is something which touches a very deep emotion in all of us."

"[T]ime and again, I mentioned to our soldiers, to our reservists that there is no point in hating every Arab for being an Arab, that many of them are as much victims of this fanaticism and ruthlessness as we are or perhaps more so because they suffer more, and they will suffer more."

"[T]his has been the condition of Israel for 40 years now. Not so extreme, not so dramatic, but we have always lived under a constant threat. Ever since the creation of this nation, we've never had a single day of a full-scale peace. We have always lived on edge."

"[I]n the 1940s, Israel was still a dream, a vision and a blueprint. They talked about the impending creation of a Jewish state in messianic terms. This state, which is about to be born, will be pure, angelic, idyllic. It will hold world records in high job morality, gold medal in good behavior, in treating minorities, in social justice. It will be both biblical and modern, both very Jewish and very secular and very democratic and very socialistic. It will be more everything than anyone. But this, of course, was a dream, a fantasy, a vision. And then came the morning after. (And?) OZ: Well, the morning after is a disappointment by definition. I maintain that the only way to keep a dream - not only a Zionist dream, any dream, a sexual dream, a sexual fantasy. The only way to keep any dream or fantasy intact and rosy and perfect and flawless is never to try to live it out. Israel is a dream come true. As such, it is destined to be a disappointment to some extent. And I accept it philosophically."

"Judaism to me is a culture - first and foremost, the Hebrew language, which I think is the crux of the heritage, a long line of books, creations, certain sensibilities which I identify as Jewish sensibilities, although they are not exclusively Jewish, humor and skepticism, certain anarchism, certain lack of confidence in any regime or government whatsoever, certain utopian ambitions about world reforming. All of these, I identify - this and more, I identify as Jewish heritage, Jewish sensibilities. And all of those are alive and kicking - sometimes kicking too hard - outside the realm of synagogue."

"Israel is essentially a refugee camp. So is Palestine, which is what makes this conflict so tragic. It's a conflict - tragic conflict between two victims, between two refugee camps."

"(What are your memories of Israel's Independence Day? You write that your father told you to take it all in because this is something you'd be talking about to your children, to your grandchildren.) OZ: Yes. This was a euphoric night for me. I was about a 9-year-old when the General Assembly of the United Nations, then in Lake Success, resolved by a two-thirds vote to divide Palestine into two sovereign states - Palestinian Arab states and Israeli Jewish states. This, in brackets, is going to be the bottom line of several decades of conflict. In the end, Israelis and Palestinians will come back to a two-state solution, closed brackets. Now, for me that night is a memory which I will carry for the rest of my life. Never in my life, either before or after, have I seen such a burst of public euphoria - euphoria combined with fear of the future. No one was certain of the results. No one was certain whether we are going to survive the impending battle with the Arab world. But this euphoria that the Jews will become an independent nation for the first time in 19 centuries since the eradication of ancient Israel by the Roman armies - by the Roman Empire - that once again, there will be a Jewish regime, a Jewish government and the Jewish law, a Jewish sovereignty. That kind of vindication of people who have always been an oppressed and loathed minority wherever - everywhere except, perhaps, in the United States of America - but everywhere else, the feeling that at last, we are going to have a home; it may be very small; it may be a home the size of a handkerchief or a postal stamp on the map of the world. But nonetheless, it's going to be our home. This euphoria of that night - the singing, the dancing in the street, the hugging between total strangers, the tears, the vows - this I'll never forget, just as I will not forget the deep, sad silence which dawned on the Arab neighborhoods. Our joy was their catastrophe. Their fear and trembling and despair and anger and bewilderment - I will never forget how while half Jerusalem celebrated with fireworks and singing and dancing, the other parts of Jerusalem were erupting darkness, silence and sadness."

"We regard Judaism as a civilization, not just as a religion. I think there are many, many ways to be a Jew. And one of those ways to be a Jew is to be a nonreligious Jew. The heritage contains, first and foremost, books, texts, spiritual creativity. And religion is only one of the components of this magnificent heritage."

"For thousands of years, we Jews had nothing but books. We had no lands, we had no holy sites, we had no magnificent architecture, we had no heroes. We had books, we had texts, and those texts were always discussed around the family table. They became part of the family life, and they traveled from one generation to the next — not unchanged, not unchallenged, but reinterpreted in each generation and reread by each generation."

"The very term 'Israel' means 'he who struggles with God.' This is the literal, dictionary sense of the word 'Israel.' So chutzpah is built into this civilization. A pupil is not expected to obey, to follow and to learn by heart. A student is expected to say a chiddush, which means something new, something original, something of his or her own interpretation of the sacred texts."

"I've been called a traitor a few times in my life by some of my countrymen. But this is no exception. Almost every person who steps out of the consensus is accused of treason by his contemporaries, or by her contemporaries. In fact, my protagonist in this novel (Judas) says that a traitor is very often simply a person who changes in the eyes of those who despise change, who mistrust change, who are antagonized to every change."

"I feel much more comfortable talking about the past than about the future. I'm old enough to know that life is full of surprises, and this is true of this country as much as it is true of Israel. I have seen people surprising not only others but even themselves."

"(In the book (Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land), you describe your childhood as a “little Zionist-nationalist fanatic.” Your attitude changed because of your friendship with a British policeman. What happened?) Amos Oz: He shared with me different perspectives. He taught me to ask questions: If I were a Palestinian Arab whose family lived here for many, many generations, how would I feel about the influx of Jewish immigrants armed with the Bible and claiming exclusive rights to the land? How would I feel if I were a British [man] who shed his blood in order to beat Hitler, and now he is being labeled by militant Israelis, militant Zionists, as a continuation of the Nazis? Those conversations were eye-openers for me, because this was a kind of language I hadn’t heard spoken around me."

"Very often, fanaticism begins at home. It begins inside the family. It begins with the urge to change our kin, to change our beloved ones for their own good because we think we know better than them what is good and what is bad for them, what is right and what is wrong in their thinking. The urge to change other people contains sometimes a certain fanatic potential."

"I think loathing begets fanaticism, and in the end loathing begets hatred and violence. I listen to my political rivals sometimes with fear and trembling, sometimes with awe, sometimes with near panic, but always with a curiosity of nuances, curiosity for the language, curiosity for the story behind the “impossible” position. So I think curiosity, a certain capacity of imagining the other, and, yes, sense of humor, all of those are powerful antidotes to fanaticism."

"If I had to squeeze my wisdom into one word, I would say: "Listen, you don't necessarily have to agree to what you listen to, but listen very carefully. Listen even to voices which you regard as dangerous, abhorrent, terrible, monstrous." Even if your conclusion is going to be, "I have to rebuff those voices, I have to fight them, I regard them as a threat to the future of my people or the future of my family," you still would be wise to listen very carefully to what those other people are saying before you form your position or even your tactic of combating them or struggling against them. Listen with a certain degree of curiosity. Even try to ask yourself: What would it be that would have made me one of them? A different background? A different family? A different upbringing? Different values? A different environment? Could I be one of those? I think this is a very simple practice, but it’s a helpful one."

"I am old enough to tell you, here in the Middle East, words such as "never," "forever" or "eternity" mean something like six months to 30 years."

"Israel is a dream come true, and as a dream come true it is flawed, very flawed, and sometimes dangerously flawed or painfully flawed. But this is in the nature of dreams, not necessarily in the nature of Israel."

"Beyond his obvious intelligence and talent, Oz has done me several kindnesses, something not often associated with creative personalities of the first rank."

"Above and beyond the loss of a major literary talent Amos Oz’s passing is a huge blow to Israelis and Jews of conscience for whom he has long been an articulate, spiritual guide on the very elusive quest for peace"

"When I interviewed Amos Oz last month we joked about how the best examples of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians were in the medical field and the criminal world. Honored to have spent time in this prolific author’s presence…"

"Among Israeli writers, including the vociferous Amos Oz, renowned internationally for his brilliant novels and bold, critical publication of possible solutions for two-state justice, every Israeli writer I met was against the occupied territories and the harsh measures used against the Palestinian inhabitants."

"We lost a soul, a mind, a heart, Amos Oz, who brought so much beauty, so much love, and a vision of peace to our lives"

"I'm no Amos Oz, who's always ready to take a firm stance...(Interviewer: "In Europe, Amos Oz is often talked about as some kind of modern Israeli prophet.") DR: That's because he can't let go of the old prophetic gestures. It's a nice role and he's comfortable with it, and maybe we need him to open people's eyes. Who knows, maybe it's just me who's cynical. But there's nothing prophetic about the rest of us, particularly the younger writers. Your horoscope can tell you more about the future than we can."

"Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, and Aharon Appelfeld, gained international recognition for works that turned inward, toward private obsessions."

"Two months ago in the last interview Amos Oz gave infornt of the cameras he told me: “I want to leave this world with the feeling my words meant something to someone” – well they certainly did!"

"The old man … received the Sabbath with sweet song and chanted the hallowing tunefully over raisin wine; while it was still day he hallowed and the sun came to gaze at his glass. … The table was well spread with all manner of fruit, beans, greenstuffs and good pies, plum water tasting like wine, but of flesh and of fish there was never a sign. … in truth it is in no way obligatory to eat flesh and fish … He and she, meaning the old man and the old woman, had never tasted flesh since growing to maturity."

"Lest I slight any creature, I must also mention the domestic animals, the beasts and birds from whom I have learned. Job said long ago (35:11): «Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, And maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?» Some of what I have learned from them I have written in my books, but I fear that I have not learned as much as I should have, for when I hear a dog bark, or a bird twitter, or a cock crow, I do not know whether they are thanking me for all I have told of them, or calling me to account."

"The Hebrew writers who I feel should be more widely appreciated my own mentors, I suppose-are Micha Berdyczewski, Yosef Haim Brenner, and, of course, Shmuel Yosef Agnon."

"Once Jews no longer obeyed the imperatives of their religion, they were virtually obliged to create new forms of identity, turning accommodation from means to end. Literature was a proving ground for the reinvention of the self. One-tenth of the Nobel Prize winners for literature in the twentieth century were born Jews, but only two of them-Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1966) and Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)-wrote in a Jewish language and only about half thought of themselves as Jews."

"The Israeli public deserves a functioning and responsible government which places the good of the country at the top of its agenda. That's what this unity government has been formed to do."

"Great things have happened this past year. We (Government of Israel) need to continue the development that started with the Abraham Accords, to work to strengthen the peace with the Gulf States, with Egypt and with Jordan. We will work to sign agreements with more countries in the region and beyond. It's a process; it won't happen in a day. But the Foreign Ministry will coordinate those efforts."

""Friendship and trust" were the foundation of the (current Israeli) government and only "friendship and trust" will keep it in power."

"It is incomprehensible how one can hold an Israeli flag in one's hand and shout 'death to Arabs' at the same time. This is not Judaism and not Israeli, and it certainly is not what our flag symbolizes. These people shame the people of Israel."

"We (Israel) might not be expecting a final status agreement soon, but there is a lot we can do to improve the lives of the Palestinians and the dialogue with them on civil issues."

"Israel will continue to do everything to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear capability."

"If international media is objective it serves Hamas. If it just shows both sides it serves Hamas. My argument is that the media can't just claim to bring both sides of the story. If you do that you are only bringing one. Hamas' side that's cowardly and that's it's lazy, it's an insult insult to the victims, including the Palestinian victims. It's also an insult to the core idea of what journalism is. Believe me I know, I was a journalist for 31 years. I have no problem with criticism of Israel, but when you know that one side lies and one side makes every effort to verify the facts, the least we can expect is that you don't give a Never Ending platform to their lies."

"If one can pursue two courses simultaneously, why not a dozen? An infinite number? It verges on a sort of science fiction. But I have always been fascinated by doubles, split personalities, and alternative possibilities."

"I am a poet largely because poetry verges closely on mythic power...The fool is the one who insists on his truth to the exclusion of others. And after all, truth, beauty, the very meaning of words-all these are relative values. This is the realm of poetry. However, you could also say that I am a poet as the result of laziness. I am too lazy to write more prose than I do. Prose is like making love to one woman instead of to fifty, which you can do with poetry...Writing should always be a pleasure, spontaneous-like making love."

"America is, after all, the only Jewish community outside of Israel that is surviving. British Jewry is stagnant, dying. Then there are the French, of course, but in the Diaspora only in America is there open Jewish dialogue, vitality. Its Jewish community is thriving and will, I feel, survive. Sometimes, perhaps, it moves in the wrong direction. But it is self-confident and alive. Many people retain their Jewish identity despite marrying non-Jews. I myself have seen it. [Smiling] Perhaps you don't agree, but the mixed marriages they have there are not all that bad. We Israelis tend to patronize American Jewry. Why not instead be happy about it? American Jews accept their Jewishness. I feel, in fact, that we in Israel could learn a little something from this the better to enjoy our being Jewish."

"It could be fairly said that I disagree with the old, false romanticism about Judaism. In practice, Orthodox Judaism can keep you busy nearly all of the time with things you should be doing. Keeps you feeling guilty. But feeling Jewish should also feel pleasurable. What can be wrong with that?"

"I myself tell people that Israel is the only place that Jews can live where they don't have always to be thinking about being Jewish. For, as you are aware, the practice of Judaism is, in practice, impractical for many of us Jews."

"When I was eighteen, I joined the British army for four years. I served in Egypt and the western desert: Palestinian [Jewish!] units were kept distant from combat zones. After that came a year in the Hagana [pre-State Israeli army], mainly smuggling arms. Such experience makes one wonder how someone like Reagan, who has never been under fire, can order others to fight and shoot. It's crazy! Immoral!"

"Here in Israel, of course, every generation backs away from its parents. Rebels against the old. That has always been the case, and not here alone. Take, for example, Dylan Thomas, now largely ignored. You may be sure that in a few years some Yale professor will rediscover his genius. But I've always kept away from the so-called literary scene, from current fashions. Really, I write for my own pleasure, for my own enjoyment. It's been that way from the very beginning. I have never been involved in any circle or group. In a sense, my politics is in my poetry; it is my poetry. Slogan poetry, the kind written out of guilt, is bad poetry. It just coddles the poet's ego, makes him think that he's done something. But my politics are, in reality, involved in my every poem."

"I've spoken a few times at Peace Now rallies. I am generally against the right wing taking over. But I think I exert more influence, such as it is, through my poems than I would by espousing public positions."

"The Ashkenazic West is more ideological; the Sephardim are, I think, more easy, more human. They don't disown their own because of a football game on Shabbat. Of course I am not talking about Shas; they're just political gangsters. The problem is that the politicians-Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Sarid, all of them have cushy jobs on the side. They don't truly feel responsible for representing voters, the citizens…In Israel your vote has nothing to do with the outcome of an election. Unlike in America, here alienation is built right into the system. But to return to the Sephardim, their good side is that although they may hate each other, they manage to live together...but some of the right-wing Ashkenazim are really psychopaths."

"I am opposed to our keeping all of the West Bank. It's plain that the time has not yet come for Arabs and Jews to be together. All that I really want is to live in a Jewish State. It's a remarkable paradox: the Left is now for policies which would separate the communities while the very far Right, living right there in the occupied territories, are in reality working for integration. Left and Right have exchanged positions, turned completely around. A true paradox! But you know, all such abstractions are relative. What is the "beautiful"? Instead of a sunset or a flower, today it could be a jet plane. Words inflate like money: the more they're printed, the more value they lose. (HC: Do you ever ponder what seems to have gone wrong here in Israel?) YA: Oh, I don't like to complain. We now have our Jewish State. The reality is far from the ideal. The Jewish people have married Israel, this land. But as in a real marriage, things have cooled down. Complaining about it sounds like an old man complaining about his age. An old couple should just live together. That's all. It is, after all, perfectly normal. We have, after all, passed the honeymoon stage, passed the romance, but this is, nonetheless, a true marriage. Such is my Zionism. I am, you see, beyond illusions. In America people, without the slightest intention of doing so, every year repeat "Next year in Jerusalem." Now that is what I call true cynicism."

"(HC: You may now be quasi-retired, but you don't at all sound ready to stop working. Nevertheless, you can look back on much of a lifetime of significant achievement and many awards. What projects have you yet in mind? What do you still want to accomplish?) YA: Oh, to continue with my own thing with poetry: to clean up the language, to use it the right way. I have no wish to be a prophet or a guru. As always, I shall use my own life as my material. You know, I have never been a poet in the professional sense. It's been that way all my life, and so it should remain."

"Yehuda Amichai and Haim Gouri, both poets, also wrote memorable fiction."

"Amichai’s poems about Jerusalem give us Jerusalemites the ability to lead an almost normal life in a place that always seems on the verge of collapse from the weight of so much history and holiness."

"Each author has a unique style, all his own...I believe every author is unique and every work is too, due to its unique style."

"Style is a part and parcel of the expression. I never “think out” devices. The device is a reflection of my psychic structure. It’s like my own voice. Part of it is the sound, the other part—my intonation."

"A writer is a person who at a certain point in his life has found out that he is bothered by something which those around him seem to take in their stride. He finds out that here the usual modes of talk will not do, and he turns to investigate it the lonely way—on paper. It is doubtful if he is to find a solution to those pestering questions, but giving shape to his probings is itself a kind of solace. And then, something strange happens. The paper gets hold of him. It stimulates him, it becomes a meaning to itself. This person has passed a thin line into a new, a different world, to stay there forever. Forever, because not to obey this call now is tantamount to desertion, or still worse, to exile."

"I think I am mostly concerned with two issues: death-in-life versus life, and chaos versus order. These two are clearly intertwined, of course. I am talking about the individual revolt against the established order of things, the attempt to break through the visible. This attempt brings about an epiphany of a wider order of things which underlies our existence."

"Every story is a breakthrough. Every story is catching a glimpse of some vast, infinite pattern which gives meaning to our lives. Every story is an acceptance, a realization that the all-encompassing pattern is there for a purpose. But the unconscious attempt to disguise the pattern is infinite, so every story comes as a surprise."

"My work is an expression of myself, and I happen to be Jewish, I guess my point of view is affected by a hierarchy of values which is bound up with this point in history, and this place in the world. And I guess there is no escape from my own point of view."

"I have two sons in the military service, one in the Air Force and one in the Army. So nobody can be against war more than myself. But to tell the truth, during the day to day routine, doing the normal things, small or great, war hardly enters our thoughts. It becomes a fact of life. Almost like air pollution."

"Every human encounter is the external embodiment of an attraction between two magnetic fields. The encounter comes suddenly, unexpectedly. It is a moment of truth. It is a moment of revelation, as when the right ray of sun penetrates through the right window pane, and falls with the right slant on one picture in the museum. This is the painfully short moment which shows us just what the artist had in mind. It happened to me once. I walked into a bookstore in Jerusalem. I opened one book after another, when suddenly I found myself reading something breathlessly. It was a book of poems by Pinhas Sadeh. There was a flash, I was touched by something powerful. For some reason, I could not purchase the book right away. A while later, back in Tel Aviv, I went to buy the book. When I opened it this time it was—difficult. The angle had changed. The ray of light passed me by. There was no illumination. The same happens with human encounters. We meet someone, and suddenly we are capable of being ourselves, just like we were supposed to be—ourselves without hiding, without pretending, with no pretexts. We are each a magnetic field. And each attraction, limited as it may appear to be, is a cosmic happening—it occurs within the broader pattern of things, within the endlessly complex structure which underlies our lives."

"(What does the title of the story, “There, The Newsroom” mean?) A. K. -C. The essential news, the news which matters, is not in the newsroom but in the opposite direction. The things which shape our lives are not projected on the television screen."

"Living in a world of flux, subjugated to the indecipherable laws of constant vicissitudes, our encounters cannot but be momentary flashes. The glamor cannot last because we change, the others change, circumstances change. So I wouldn’t call the end of a relationship a failure."

"I wrote about the hard way in which one learns the pain of the break between dream and reality. And you know, in the beginning I tended to write, for lack of a better term, in the “romantic” vein. I was trying to search for human nature through the external order of things. I wanted to touch human misery without getting my hands dirty, out of a peculiar fastidiousness. I think I changed tremendously in this sense. I am not as much of an outsider anymore. I am more capable now of observing the pain, and being part of it at the same time. I have learned to come to terms with the “concrete” and naked reality and not flinch from expressing it in a more direct fashion."

"After all, what are we trying to find in a book ? Ourselves. A good book offers you yourself in a more articulate way. Reading is actually plunging into one’s own identity and, one hopes, emerging stronger than before. You see, unconsciously, we are seeking to find an affirmation to our own world -perception and set of values. Since these change as we grow up and develop, our response to books changes as well. I don’t believe there is an objective yardstick by which a book may be evaluated. The “science” of literary criticism is an illusion—it is based on subjective impressions, and no one feels the sting more strongly than I, being a critic myself. The only thing I hope to do in my books, is to open up the reader to a new awareness. There is no logical or speculative message I intend to transmit. The “message” belongs to the realm of intuition, imagination and emotional perception. If I manage to make a reader sensitive to that special awareness which has inspired me to write, I consider myself a lucky writer."

"I write when I cannot hold back any longer. Call it an attack, an ir­resistible impulse. In a way, my writing has almost been clandestine. There was a constant feeling of guilt, and a continuous tension between my duties at home and my literary aspirations."

"Her stories plunge the reader directly into an unmediated world of subjective feeling. Usually the subjects of her novels and stories are young women facing the problems of growing up and contending with romantic attachments. In a later novel, With Her on Her Way Home (1991), she deals with the problems of growing old. Kahana-Carmon's language is carefully shaped and unadorned, but possessing an idiosyncratic subtlety that makes translation difficult."

"Amalia Kahana-Carmon is often described as the Israeli Virginia Woolf. Though she belongs to the age group of the Palmach generation of the fifties, she is normally classified as one of the “New Wave” writers on a par with A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz."

"All the Rivers touched a raw nerve in Israeli society. The book tries to address the Jewish fear of losing our identity in the Middle East. And yet that very fear condemned it to official rejection. It was banned from the high-school curriculum on the grounds that “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threaten to subvert our distinct identity.” The Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett had claimed that I portrayed Israeli soldiers as sadistic criminals — even though he flatly denied reading the book — and now all the Israeli social networks, news sites and current-affairs programs were discussing All The Rivers."

"Despite the incessant efforts to caricature “the other” as demonic and boorish; despite the attempts to persuade us that the Palestinians are nothing but “shrapnel in the ass”; despite the political deadlock and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s steadfast refusal to engage with the other side — despite all this, All the Rivers is an aperture for dialogue. Far away in New York, Liat and Hilmi, an artist and a student, discover their affinities and their shared fate. Theirs is a complicated love story. But it is suffused with our responsibility to see the other, to be able to recognize ourselves in them. Above all, it rests on the hope that whether we want to or not, whether we shut our eyes or plug our ears, whether we drag our feet or stomp our legs, we will sooner or later admit that we — us and them — sail on the same boat."

"Israel's collective consciousness, which was the cornerstone of the foundation of the Zionist state 53 years ago and which bound the immigrants from all parts of the world into a people, into a nation, is no longer our consciousness. This is the archaic, too idealistic outlook on life of our parents that arouses in us a concealed snigger at the Sabbath-eve family dinners. According to it, the individual has to sacrifice his own good, his freedom, his life, for the common good. This outlook has not succeeded in upgrading itself to a modern, sophisticated version."

"Through all those years Marcelle had confused Yoel with the imaginary heroes that her sad eyes cut out of the romances she read... and she realized that all through the past years she had merely travelled over the road map of the land of love, never in the land itself."

"Someone was at the door. I was vacuuming, with Nirvana on the stereo at full volume, and the polite doorbell chirps had failed to break through, rousing me only when they lost their patience and became long and aggressive. It was mid-November, early on a Saturday afternoon. I'd managed to get a few things done in the morning and was now busy cleaning. I vacuumed the couches and the hardwood floor, my ears bursting with the hollow roar of air and the reverberating music, a monotonous screen of white noise that somehow imbued me with calm. I was free of thoughts as I wielded the suction hose to root out dust and cat fur, entirely focused on the reds and blues of the rug. I snapped out of it when the vacuum's sigh subsided just as the song was whispering its last sounds. In the three- or four-second gap before the next track, I heard the sharp, insistent doorbell chime. Like a deaf person who suddenly regains her hearing, I had trouble finding language. (beginning of chapter 1)"

"The hoarseness of my voice echoes in my ears as if from another era: "I have to leave...." (chapter 7)"

"yesterday, in cafés and bars and streets all over town, thousands of other young couples had met, men and women whose paths had crossed and who had spent the weekend together, taking comfort in each other, salving their loneliness in this vast city. That's all, I thought as I sank down and my breathing grew deeper, aligned with his. Just as quickly as it started yesterday, it could be over tomorrow. It could all end with a big hug and a friendly kiss at the door. (chapter 13)"

"Although I was exhausted, it took a long time to fall asleep. Hilmi had dropped off long ago, but my mind hummed with the sounds of our time together, unready to let go of them yet. (chapter 13)"

"Quiet hours and long talks, awash in each other... (ch 14)"

"Those frozen December days, the last days of 2002, come back to me years later slightly blurred, shining through the mist, as though preserved in my memory right from the start with a slightly unreal distortion. Or perhaps it's that over time they have lost some of their sharpness and acquired a dreamy afterglow. 14"

"...my gaze meets the laptop screen and the words I poured out all afternoon. It began yesterday without any particular intent, just a quick reply to my sister. But today when I went back, the email suddenly took on a different form, more feverish, more poetic. I was seized by a storytelling binge, a lucid, cutting clarity, and from page to page the words joined together and frothed and flowed. And it is then that I realize I am not writing to Iris anymore. That the recipient is in fact myself, an as-of-yet unknown self, a me who has long ago gone back to Israel and is living my tomorrow-life in Tel Aviv, a distant me who will one day open up this file and read the words, and perhaps with hindsight have a better understanding of what is occurring inside me now, what I am going through in these mad and beautiful days. She will remember us as we once were, in New York, in Hilmi's Brooklyn studio. She will read the lines and remember how I sat here once on this couch, in December of 2002, like the bird perched on the windowsill all afternoon, and watched myself loving him while I wrote these words. (chapter 14)"

"At last, the luminous match was struck and the day was lit. But Matti had awakened earlier-before her father rose from his dreamless bed and went, sorrowful, to the sea; before her sister Sofia's blue baby awoke and shook the house with his cough; before her sister Lizzie returned from night shift at the hospital, her high heels clacking on the living room floor, revealing under her white nurse's smock a shimmering low-necked dress and colorless bruises. Matti woke up knowing she'd had a bad dream but could not remember what it was. (first lines, chapter title: "Matti Azizyan's Birthday, five-thirty in the Morning")"

"Between them she felt small, even smaller than herself. (p13)"

"From Mama we learned what sort of people we should be, and we loved her as a confidante; but Papa's image was the mold of our dreams. (p52)"

"The silence was very intense, like the hush that used to trouble her mind when she was the first to wake up on Saturday mornings. (p97)"

"That spring evening, which was marked by the harsh sting of chopped red peppers, all over the housing estate, in all the flats around all the supper tables, the residents talked about Matti Azizyan. Her actions dwarfed the fathers and mothers and big brothers, made their voices crack with shock, and reduced their world to the dimensions of the backyard. (p135)"

""If you could just for a moment come out of yourself and see what I see...you wouldn't stop looking at yourself. But unfortunately you need a mirror to do it, my poor beauty.” (p148)"

"Only literature can allow us to see each other as individuals. (2023)"

"Freedom of speech in Israel is so fragile, and this book was attacked as a symbol, for its vulnerability. (2019)"

"Art and literature are about a magical appeal to identity and empathy. How an identity in literature is transferred into your own identity so that you care for a fictional stranger so that you get into his skin and wear his gaze. This is what is so powerful. It is an antidote to the armoury we are requested to put on. This shield of ignorance and indifference and apathy. Because if you really sense everything, if you don’t wear this shield, it is painful. (2017)"

"If you allow only one perspective, you narrow the world. [Then] something is missing for us to interpret our future. Where we are heading. (2017)"

"What literature should suggest to us as readers is beyond debate — it’s our ability to elaborate our perspectives and to have knowledge of the other from within his mind and feelings, allowing us to recognize the humanity of the other...It makes us not only better human beings but better citizens of our worlds. (2017)"

"I’ve always been a little bit suspicious, because sometimes this poetic sensibility in Israeli culture turns the conflict into something romantic. There is nothing romantic about occupation and occupiers and the occupied. (2017)"

"This strange craft of writing stories requires self-belief in these visions that you have (2017)"

"We cannot explore someone else’s identity from within as we do with books and literature… And we cannot do it when you don’t wear someone else’s skin as literary work invites us to do. This empathy that we can taste is so unique to storytelling via the page....I try to encourage myself when it comes to writing prose. Because I do believe in it and love it. This is my home. (2017)"

"By just acknowledging a dual perspective to everything, along with two justifications, you are considered a non-patriot in today’s Israel. (2017)"

"The lighthouse of marriage is only one of a host of glimmering lights."

"I shall always write about immigrants, about mobility; about the gap between what you wish for, and what you get."

"(Do you classify yourself as a Sephardi writer?) I am in the middle, neither here nor there. I have a sense of comradeship with people like me, who were caressed by the same accent when they were babies, who had the same taste on their tongues."

"The work is tiring, drudgery, a labour of years, and when the reader receives the book, he has to feel the trickery, the magic. He must not see the heart that suffers, the grubby hands."

"There is something so wonderful and reassuring about the organism called "The Family', a multi-limbed, multi-headed creature. It's awful to tear oneself from such a large, warm body, but it is essential for growth. I would very much like to use the 'Me' term, but I can't. It's not accidental that I haven't yet written a novel with a first person singular narrator, only stories told by 'We'."

"My traditional society defined womanhood as poverty, but I have turned it into wealth. As a child I was jealous of the preference for boys, then the jealousy became anger and disappointment, but I turned the offence into a source of strength, which produced literature and power. I am a link in a chain of astonishing women in my family."

"We are drugged with romantic novels and Turkish films and sayings like, 'Everything will be better when you're married', and we rush panic-stricken towards the wedding-canopy, out of hunger, almost as though it were a children's disease we cannot recover from until we take the marriage vow. We leave the 'We' of the family and move directly to the 'Us' of the couple, without any 'Me' in the middle. I think that on the way from 'We' to 'Us' there has to be a 'Me', otherwise you have no energy for living."

"Darkness and the fact that the whole world is asleep brings a kind of quietness, and makes time softer, neutralizing the positive vibrations of humanity that abound in daylight. It is easier then to convince myself for several hours that the solitude I must have in order to write is inviolable."

"I don't know anyone, certainly not myself, who would sit and write for eight hours a day, if it were not for some lack, something broken in his life. History of art proves that emotional confusion and a crisis of values are a prerequisite for creation. I create not out of abundance but out of broken worlds. (What is so broken about your world? You grew up in a big, loving family.) There was a kind of weakness, when the home confronted the street. If I had not been the daughter of immigrants, if I were not aware of the gap between Ispahan and Kfar Saba, the tension between what my parents expected to find here and what they found, I would probably not have become a writer. That is the pit out of which I write."

"There is nothing more Arabic than honor and shame."

"Living in Israel means that you have the choice. You can live a totally European lifestyle, or you can live a life that is oriented toward the Arab world. Or the third world, if you like."

"I work with the Palestinians, I try to communicate, try to be a part of the intellectual movement that wants to build a bridge. But walking on that bridge, or being a brick in that bridge-I'm not sure how much value that would have. I believe in the masses, in what happens in the grass roots."

"(about what happened to the Sephardic Jews in Israel.) Well, we prefer to be called Mizrahi, that is, Oriental or Eastern. The term Sephardic isn't used so much anymore, and actually refers to people from Spain. The answer to your question is one of the great failings of the Zionist movement. The movement started in Europe and spread out from there, and as a result, the hegemony in Israel is European, which is foreign to this region. I believe that the conflict in the Middle East is what it is today because the Mizrahi Jews who emigrated here from Muslim countries have been so passive...They were persuaded to come to the new land by the European Jews. Most of them had in fact dreamed of it for years, but they never actively left their countries. So in effect they came here as 'guests' of the Zionist movement, and they groveled and apologized as they came. The pioneers were European, and the greater part of Middle Eastern Jews became second-class citizens, the proletariat."

"The Holocaust effectively spewed the Jews out of Europe. Nothing even close to similar ever happened to the Jews in the Muslim world. Seen cynically, it seems strange that the Jews who were in effect exiled nevertheless continue to look to the European lifestyle with great veneration and try to recreate it in their own homeland. It makes you want to shout: 'Listen, people, you could have created something beautiful here, if you had only turned backs on those who killed six million of you, and instead accepted that the people who live in this region have never done anything like that.' I think that the majority of Jews who used to live with the Arabs were more peaceful, friendlier, more natural and humane than the European Jews. For example, the Sephardic rabbis in Morocco used to preach a pragmatic, sensible Judaism. Orthodoxy did not exist in those communities. Here in Israel, everything has become stricter and more extreme, like an echo of the Ashkenazi rabbis who had their religion influenced by a Catholic environment, where guilt and punishment were key concepts. (“What happened to the Sephardic culture here in Israel? Does it still exist at all?") DR: It was given no recognition. The European hegemony was so strong that it suppressed the very idea that there might be such a thing as Sephardic or Mizrahi culture. ("But has it continued to exist in one form or another?") DR: Behind closed doors, yes. In formal situations, no. But if we look back over the past ten years, there has been a dramatic change. Today, the notion that Israel is a pluralistic and multicultural place is more accepted. The very fact that my books and books by Sami Michael are being published is proof of that. Now you can listen to Middle Eastern music on the radio, watch TV dramas about families in Iraq or Iran, and it is all mainstream. It has received the Israeli stamp of kosher, as we say here. So now we are basically 100 percent Israeli. But that is something very recent."

"(Does she see herself as a Mizrahi writer?) Yes, of course. Some of my female colleagues claim that my writing is not feminist literature. And I completely agree, because it is human literature, written by a woman. The fact that I am a woman colors my writing. I am proud of being a woman, just as I am proud of being an Israeli of Iranian descent. I write from what is essentially me, and being Iranian is absolutely an element of that."

"I really do see some interesting similarities in Hebrew and Palestinian literature, especially the literature written by second generation Mizrahi Jews and post-1948 Palestinians. The two have a lot in common, or rather a lot of parallels, as their paths do not cross and they never refer to each other. But they deal with the same subjects, the same set of issues. So you could say that we are on the same track, just using different languages."

"The differences between me and an author like Etgar Keret, who has parents who survived the Holocaust, are obvious-but so are the similarities. In a way, we are both telling the stories of those who were silenced by Israeli hegemony. There was a conformity that said, 'Let bygones be bygones! We will create a new country! We want the children here to be proud and magnificent!' But this is not a fair game. And there is a great opportunity for literature here, to give voice to those silenced voices."

"If you only have this superstition and no conscience in addition, then you're trapped in spiritual poverty. It's difficult even for me to let go of the superstition, no matter how much I want to. My parents cannot let go, because that is all they have. The alternative is far too frightening." ("And the alternative is to take responsibility for and control of your own life?") Yes, and that's a frightening thought, because there are no role models. So you feel trapped in this poverty, a kind of regression into the past."

"Judaism is not something I practice, but something that I carry inside. Being Israeli gives you the privilege of including Jewishness as part of a package, part of yourself. You don't ask any questions unless you want to. I have grown up in a Jewish country and I appreciate that."

"the literature I value the most is those parts of the Bible that I read through choice and love. I am proud of the Bible and carry it with me. I read it as literature, I don't worship it, but I see it as part of who I am."

"Judaism is a cult religion. There is no evangelizing, newcomers are not welcome. Religious Jews cultivate and practice segregation at all levels. In terms of food, they separate milk and meat. Our weekdays are different. There are various materials that you're not supposed to wear. In fact, there are lots of elements from God's creation that aren't allowed-ranging from certain certain types of fish that you cannot eat to certain types of people you cannot marry. So it's a very isolated position, which means that Jews-wherever they live-often stick together and don't assimilate. I really wish that Judaism could be practiced in the way it deserves, that those who claim to be Jewish could show more respect for the non-Jews around them, for a start. The way I see it, thinking and wisdom are absolutely fundamental to the Jewish attitude. Judaism has been elaborated throughout more than 2,000 years of exile, but now that we've become masters of this country, taken by power, this wisdom has suddenly been forgotten. Look at Jews in Diaspora, in the global society, the fact that they're a minority makes them better Jews...Because they don't see their Jewishness as a passport. For them, Judaism is an obligation to be better people, they don't have a choice. Here in Israel, the Bible is used to suppress other religions, to control other people's lives, to kick people out of their home and subdue an entire nation. Just because you've had this book for so long, and then come back to where the action took place, you feel you can say, 'I'm going to use force, I call on the army!' We're talking here about people who demand land for spiritual reasons, and it's done in such a crude way. That's exploiting the Bible."

"The problem with Palestinian literature in Israel is that so few of us know anything about it. ("Did you ever read any Palestinian literature in the course of your schooling?") No, they thought it would be more useful for us to read James Joyce than the literature of our neighbors. I think it is in fact an Israeli policy not to translate Arabic literature. There is a hostile attitude that is being transferred from one generation to the next. The truth is that we do not have insight into their personal and cultural life. We have nothing that can be used to bridge the gap. Literature could, of course, be such a bridge, because it helps you to see that other people are human just like us."

"The old role for writers was linked to nation building. The country was so young, and we needed someone to speak on behalf of the people, but today, the disparity in opinions is so great that no one can claim to hold the absolute truth anymore. I can't stand and say that I know the truth. I feel confused and at a loss, like most people. That's why I practically never write newspaper articles. Nothing here is black and white, everything is shades of gray. Even my left-wing politics are fluid, because everything in society is fluid. I'm no Amos Oz, who's always ready to take a firm stance. I need someone to talk to me. Personally, I prefer listening to academics rather than authors, because academics analyze reality every day. At a political level, he or she is far better equipped to do this than someone who can write a love story that makes me melt. Authors are best at internalization, having empathy-an author who is good is good at a personal level."

"(In Europe, Amos Oz is often talked about as some kind of modern Israeli prophet.) DR: That's because he can't let go of the old prophetic gestures. It's a nice role and he's comfortable with it, and maybe we need him to open people's eyes. Who knows, maybe it's just me who's cynical. But there's nothing prophetic about the rest of us, particularly the younger writers. Your horoscope can tell you more about the future than we can. I don't see writing as a kind of vocation or destiny, but as the only profession that I've mastered. If someone discovers something greater underlying it all, then I've been lucky. But I don't work an eight-hour day in order to deliver a message. I'm trying to find out something about myself, about my life, trying to control something in all this chaos. For me, writing is the only way to give order to my life. To earn a living by doing something that gives me peace, and that makes me happy"

"The concept post-Zionism stems from the so-called new historians who in the early '90s came up with new facts, new stories, facts that the nation builders had omitted from textbooks in order to foster a generation that was proud and prepared to join the army and die, a generation fueled by patriotic loyalty. Facts such as the Palestinians being driven from their houses and having to flee in 1948. These new historians were deemed to be very radical, they sabotaged the prevailing views of Zionism and Israel. I personally am a radical and post-Zionist, in the sense that I take into account the fact that what we learned at school was not the absolute truth. At the same time, I live here in Israel, and in this sense I enjoy the fruits of the occupation in 1948. But I totally condemn the occupation in 1967. Israel is my only home. I know that it is built on a crime, and I am willing to pay for that crime, but I'm not willing to let Israel become a two-nation state. I want two states for two people, and I want to see the refugees from 1948 receive compensation for the crime that gave me my home, but I will never agree to creating a joint Jewish-Palestinian state between the River Jordan and the sea. I think that would be a catastrophe for the Jews. I want the Palestinian community to thrive, but not at the risk of becoming a refugee myself. And I say that with the greatest love for those who disagree with me, the sons and daughters of the refugees from 1948. They are welcome to come here and live in Jaffa, just as I sometimes go to live in New York, or my sister lives in London. They will have full rights here, but not citizenship. They will have their Palestine, their own homeland. In order to achieve peace, we have to establish two states alongside one another."

"Rabinyan's writing is vivid and sensual, physical and intimate and at times, very direct and crude. Dorit Rabinyan is a very likeable woman. She is intense, reflective, and humorous."

"Dorit Rabinyan is a young author of Iranian background who writes beautifully about Iran and Israel."

""you know how difficult it is to realize that some pains can’t be cured by love?”"

"When two people meant for each other refuse to accept their vocation, they sentence themselves to a life full of hatred and blame and everyone is to blame for their missed opportunity."

"I've gotten used to so many symbolic interpretations of my work. Every fighting couple becomes a manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (2019)"

"It seems that wherever you go, your country follows you like a shadow. (2019)"

"Creating new from old is to a large extent the story of our lives. We are born anew into an "old" narrative, as humans and as writers. (2019)"

"Writing is all about discovery. It is my own journey into the unknown, no less than my characters' journey. Knowing and creating are almost opposite for me. In order to create, I must leave ample space for the unknown. It turns the writing process into an adventure. (2019)"

"Encounters with pain and sorrow made me want to write. When I was 6, I was already writing sad poems about cats and dogs that had been killed and soldiers that were dying in war. It’s in my DNA. (2014)"

"Normally the characters I create are busy in some sort of crisis and, as a literary therapist, it is my job to help them overcome it. (2014)"

"The job of literature is to change the reader’s soul. I don’t want my readers just to enjoy themselves. I want them to go through some sort of experience that might change themselves. (2014)"

"You can feel the extremeness of Israeli society and life in my books without it being explicit. I only look for the individual experienced and give a taste of the complexity of life in Israel. (2014)"

"Living in Jerusalem and writing in Jerusalem is always a struggle, because the tension is huge, sometimes is even tragic. On one hand, is really disturbing, but, on the other hand, is a huge inspiration. (2014)"

"(Do you consider yourself a religious person?) No, not at all. I see the Bible as a source of inspiration, for me it’s literature. (2014)"

"Shalev is an ‘extraordinary writer,’ the French crime novelist Leila Slimani has said, one whose ‘style is poetic, luminous, demanding’ and who writes ‘with incredible delicacy and power about family, love and fear.’"

"Is it possible that what was lost — or indefinitely suspended — on October 7 was the minuscule chance for real dialogue, for each nation’s true acceptance of the other’s existence? And what do those who brandished the absurd notion of a "binational state" say now? Israel and Palestine, two nations distorted and corrupted by endless war, cannot even be cousins to each other — does anyone still believe they can be conjoined twins? Many warless years will have to pass before acceptance and healing can even be considered. In the meantime, we can only imagine the magnitude of fear and hatred that will now rise to the surface. I hope, I pray, that there will be Palestinians on the West Bank who, despite their hatred of Israel — their occupier — will set themselves apart, whether through action or words, from what their compatriots have done. As an Israeli, I have no right to preach to them or tell them what to do. But as a human being, I have a right — and an obligation — to demand of them humane and moral conduct. Are we capable of shaking off the well-worn formulas and understanding that what has occurred here is too immense and too terrible to be viewed through stale paradigms? Even Israel’s conduct and its crimes in the occupied territories for 56 years cannot justify or soften what has been laid bare: the depth of hatred towards Israel, the painful understanding that we Israelis will always have to live here in heightened alertness and constant preparedness for war."

"I thought everything was fine in our country, because I thought everything was fine for me. But on my visits to the United States, I began to understand the oppression of women. And as I became more aware, I realized that feminism is a way of life. Feminism isn’t only about support for women; it’s about support for everyone who is victimized or marginalized. I accepted that way of life."

"...for me, doing means contributing, doing for others."

"In her 2014 memoir, Dayan wrote that during her lifetime, she witnessed Israel transform from “a beloved, admired, victorious and just homeland, via an unbearable regression, to the dangerous sphere of ethno-theocratic messianic existence, which is so far removed from a peace- and justice-seeking society."

"For all the progress that has been made, the same old hypocritical notions are still used to fight gender equality."

"Cases of corruption come and go; the public anger they generate is inevitably diluted by the slow pace at which the legal system delivers justice. All the while, the country stays wrapped in a near-permanent bulletproof vest, preparing for the next war even as we recover from the last one."

"For years, we have believed Israel to be a country whose vast military power is tempered by moral strength, supported by social solidarity and guided by well-balanced leadership. The recent war with Hezbollah shattered, at great cost, what was left of this belief. However, to my perhaps overly optimistic eyes, the war may have finally taught us — for the better — the limits of power. Just as a president and a Cabinet minister cannot resort to coercive persuasion when the charms they allegedly exercise fail to convince, so too the government and the military cannot continuously insist that where power has already failed more power will win."

"It is inconceivable that we should still have to discuss the Palestinian right to self-determination,” she told The Star. “We are still doubting that they are people. This is so stupid, it is like an ostrich burying its head."

"We have not yet produced a universal literature in Israel, which doesn't detract from its quality...We are still in a localized phase, reflecting what is happening to us now, a mirror of reality."

"The patriotism, idealism, the caring for others, the sense of involvement are still there, but on top of this is a layer called normalcy...One of the bases of Zionism was called 'normalization of the Jewish people.' This has become a matter of individual preference: videotapes, cars, gadgets. It gives the impression of a change in priorities. It will not last, if only because of the economics that will not allow it...Now that we have normalization and have built a country where my children can wear a Walkman and listen to Michael Jackson, we are complaining: Where is the spirit of Zionism? With the flood of American culture, we, like others, are losing something special of our own culture...With all that, I think we will also retain much."

"Nothing will be the same now. I have looked at cessation of life, destruction of matter, sorrow of destroyers, agony of the victorious, and it had to leave a mark."

"Though the predominant ethos of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel has been enlightened — in both the liberal and socialist senses — large sections of the Israeli society, whether Jewish or Arab, are still strongly patriarchal in their social structure and traditional in their attitudes, with strong religious influences."

"Given the level of education, professional talents and human qualities of Israeli women, it is difficult to understand why their presence is so sparse in the vital crossroads of Israel’s political life without taking into account the heterogeneity and complexity of Israeli society — a society, we shouldn’t forget, that is also struggling to attain peace and security. This social complexity forces those of us struggling to attain full gender equality in Israel to adopt a policy of compromise, bridging of gaps and patient educational work — rather than one of radical feminism, for which many of us may wish. The reality is that today in Israel, human and women’s rights are not yet fully accepted as normative, and are thus not adequately protected."

"Our goal is clear — to attain full equality for women, to prevent discrimination, abuse and violence against them, and to empower and advance the female segment of the population. We believe that in so doing we are not only serving women, but are also strengthening Israeli democracy."

"I have no doubt that once peace is attained in the Middle East, the struggle for the advancement of women and their equality will assume a high priority in our society, and become a subject of cooperation among women in the whole region."

"As I have become involved with the rights of all groups living in Israel, I’ve become more involved with women’s rights, too. Still, I think that women who are involved only in women’s rights are missing the point."

"we have a macho, male society which is not only engaged militarily but is dominated by male tradition religiously and sociologically...Women need to be represented in politics, in lobbying, need to try to achieve legislation. We need to get more women into politics and into the Knesset."

"Women lead the peace movement. They’ve definitely got positions of leadership there."

"If we really can advance towards peace, I see this as a springboard for other changes. Peace and war are irreversible, but other things are less absolute. Since we don’t have a constitution, if there is a change in the law it can be undone later. So it wouldn’t bother me to go along on some concessions and then in better times, say, try and change them. If there is peace, a lot of wrongs will be corrected."

"We started as a society of immigrants; the Palestinians started as people on their land. They’ve expected their state to be delivered to them by outside forces; we had to do it ourselves, and so on down the line. There is no comparison, neither in the time element nor in the content. The point is that they are not going to wait for 2,000 years to have a homeland. Where they are now is where we were before, and the way we demanded and got our rights, they deserve just as much."

"(Do you think that, in general, the large portion of the occupied territories will be returned?) YD: Oh sure, excluding the territory around Jerusalem."

"(How do you advise women who want to be part of the system making changes in present-day Israel? What can you say to women who want to enter politics?) YD: They have to work within the party system — every party — and on the national level with other parties. It cannot be only an effort within the party. The power of women has to be expressed by sheer numbers. It must be mobilization — whether it’s academic or grassroots."

"I finished working, satisfied with my new role as a victim, feeling slightly sorry for myself, somehow heroic. I wasn't just anybody, I was a betrayed woman. (chapter 4)"

"The country woke up on October 24, 1973, a Wednesday, as if it were a wedding day. Cease-fire was expected at any moment, and the words, "The war is over," though not yet uttered by anybody, were ringing in every heart. (beginning of chapter 7)"

"I sat and looked at the familiar living room. A low coffee table, four armchairs and a sofa, embroidered cushions and a whitewashed wall with two original paintings and a few lithographs. Yet, as my eyes examined the objects, I felt strangely out of place. As if the past few weeks had been spent in limbo, as if I were waking up from anesthesia, coming back to life from a shelter. I realized the paradox. I had escaped the war by plunging into the horrors of it. The burnt limbs and faces, the amputees, the invalids, the dead, they became abstract in the nightly duty, and the sound of guns and shells, the diving of aircraft and the roar of tanks advancing-this reality was so far away-sounds overcome and numbed by the silence of hospital corridors. I knew a terrible event had taken place, but I didn't feel it. People died, but I didn't know them. We claimed a victory, but I didn't rejoice in it, and when we were defeated at the beginning, I wasn't frightened. As if I weren't really there. (chapter 8)"

"All the intimacy in the world can't remove a slight sense of guilt when watching someone who isn't aware of being watched. (chapter 14)"

"Yael Dayan was an activist who rejected her father’s fate and life’s choice and sought peace. She spent her life making the country a better place for women, queer folks, refugees, Palestinians, everyone. Yael Dayan’s life describes a country growing more alive, with the passing of decades and generations, to human rights."

"A new woman’s voice in the darkness belongs to Yael Dayan who seems recently to have undergone a feminist metamorphosis."

"We have Yael Dayan and Shani Boianjiu to thank for bringing the Israeli woman soldier’s experiences to life for English readers."

"First of all we have to plant the Garden of Eden, because without the Garden of Eden there is no serpent; without the boughs of the apple tree to hide in, the serpent is nothing but an eater of dirt, of no greater significance than a snail or a worm. Therefore, let there be a Garden of Eden! And in fact, why "let there be"? There was a Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden existed. Because why shouldn't I call what I had a "Garden of Eden"? Let's begin with a Sabbath day of unutterable sweetness."

"Anyone who grew up like I did will always see the room from the point of view of the maid who comes to clean it. (p198)"

""...Just because a person realizes how lucky he was doesn't mean that he's prepared to stop being lucky." (p 265)"

"you can never know what will calm the troubled soul: a poem, a philosophical saying, or a silly slogan on the roof of the Jewish Agency. (p272)"

"you can't put a lid on the past so easily (p355)"

"Sometimes you have to stick your finger down your throat and vomit up the disgusting insides of the self... sometimes you have to increase the nausea in order to get rid of the disgust... (p12)"

"Love can be described as compulsive thinking. The thought buzzes and buzzes like an insect stuck to a wet picture...Compulsive thinking latches on to details and dwells on them as if they hold enormous significance which cannot be grasped in a moment. It keeps returning to them again and again as if there is still something left to understand. The more I think about the meaning of these gestures the sicker I get of my thoughts and of myself for thinking them. (p34-5)"

"what does it help me to know that the heart is a muscle, just a blood-pumping muscle, if my heart still goes out to him, and the bloody muscle still yearns and swells? (p38)"

""Only someone with an individual voice of his own can describe what is impossible to describe" (p51)"

"Love had mobilized my entire being, love ruled me like a tyrant, and love would allow for no other master. (p67)"

"Personally, I think it’s very important for a writer to know what kinds of things are beyond his or her knowledge. Even though I spent a lot of time with people who came from Russia, and visited Russia eight times before writing “Confessions,” I knew it wasn’t possible for me to write what’s going on in Alek’s mind."

"Being a mother — especially of twins — taught me how to work efficiently. Family life saves one from the dangers of solipsism, which I think many writers encounter. One has to learn how to live with two parallel worlds, and, in a way, use the actual life as a good and safe base from which one can send expeditions to that parallel world. I think that dealing only with words all the time doesn’t do one any good. It’s good to remember that there are other human beings around you."

"For me there’s no dichotomy between thought on one hand, and feelings or passion on the other. They aren’t different spheres. In a way, I believe that our passions appear to us in the form of thoughts. And that thought can be extremely passionate. Every person, when he experiences some kind of feeling, also relates to that feeling — judges it, evaluates it. I think that what makes people different is not so much what they feel as the different ways they respond to their feelings."

"Hareven, one of Israel's finest writers, has a keen insight into how a toxic relationship can consume a woman."

"The simple thirst for vengeance that drives so many crime thrillers becomes, in Hareven’s hands, the subject of a moral investigation that yields no clear answers. This is what gives Lies, First Person its haunting power and reveals Hareven as a novelist that American readers should embrace."

"I was born in 1949, into a war, and started school in 1956, the year of the Suez War. I finished high school in 1967 during the Six-Day War, married in 1973, the year of the Yom Kippur War. My first child was born in the middle of the 1970s, when war was raging in Lebanon; my second child was born in 1982, when Israel annihilated Beirut with bombs, and my father died during the Gulf War. My whole life is mapped out by wars. When I talk to my Israeli peers, they say, 'It's the same with me.' And I say, 'But is that a good thing? Or should we do something about it?' I'm trying to fight against all this, so that my children's lives and the lives of my grandchildren are not always described by wars.'"

"("I ask Natour what potential he thinks literature has in this situation. And what about his own work, translating Hebrew literature into Arabic, is there a sort of mission behind that? Is it important for Palestinians to know about Hebrew literature?") SN: Extremely important. I am strongly in favor of translations, both ways. We should get to know each other better and better. Literature is a perfect way to do that, because literature allows you to have direct contact with the other side. It takes you into their society. Knowing the other side makes it possible to have dialogue."

"It is not democracy when Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. That is racist. Over twenty percent of the population in this country is Arab, like me. I don't want to live in a Jewish state, I want to live in a democratic state. The majority might be Jewish or Muslim, that doesn't matter to me, as long as the state is democratic. And this Jewish state has a law called 'the Law of Return,' which guarantees the right of all Jews from all over the world to come and settle here. Whereas the Palestinians who were forced to flee in 1948, and whose houses are perhaps still standing today, are not allowed to come back. And another thing: I was born after 1948, so I have Israeli citizenship, but many of the Palestinians who live in this country and who were born before 1948 don't have that right. They are called present absentees. Is that democratic? How can Israel and Israeli authors talk about democracy? Israel should ask itself what sort of state it wants to be, one based on power or one based on justice. The Jews have the right to live here, but we Palestinians have the same right. They have created so many problems for the people here, problems that they have to solve. So no, I don't think there will ever be peace until the refugee issue is resolved."

"When I grew up, there was Hebrew literature on the curriculum, and only a bit of Arabic-but certainly no Palestinian literature. They didn't speak about the Israeli Palestinians as Palestinians at all, but rather as Arabs. They thought that if I was a Palestinian, then I was Arafat. So it immediately became a political issue. The Jewish identity is very, very confused. The Palestinians don't have that problem."

"a thief's feeling of guilt lies deep in the Israeli psyche. Many of them know that they are guilty. The politicians and military cannot allow themselves to say or feel that they are in any way at fault, of course, but now and then a writer feels it. And they deal with this feeling in one of two ways: either they try to repress it, or they try to find a solution. Every so often, Israeli writers try to make contact and protest against the occupation. The problem is that they seldom talk about al-Nakba and their responsibility for what happened in 1948...That is the reason why they don't want to let the 1948 refugees back, because then they will have to admit that they have been lying the whole time. Because the official version has always been that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily. It is a psychological and moral problem...What I try to tell the Jews is that they can ask me, as a Palestinian, to help them solve their guilt problem. I don't want them, or us, to carry on suffering."

"I know that all Israelis say that if the refugees are given the right to return, it spells the end of Israel...The point is that they think like colonials. Because they came here and took another people's land by force, they think that the return of the Palestinians will inevitably mean that they themselves are chased out and that the Palestinians will take over the whole land. But we cannot ignore the fact that the refugees are an Israeli problem, and not a Palestinian one. The Palestinians have the right to return, this is their home and country. Everyone is of course aware of the problems connected with coming back, but that is the next step. The first step has to be that Israel recognizes this right. Then we can discuss the practical solutions with each family."

"("So what about Palestinian culture, in terms of those who live here in Israel, as opposed to in the West Bank or in Gaza?") SN: There are no conflicts and no real cultural differences, but of course our lives are different. They live under a military occupation, and we live under a cultural occupation...we have to differentiate between three different groups of Palestinian writers: Palestinians living in Israel, Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians living abroad. As far as Palestinians in Israel are concerned, I can speak from experience. I have written about Jews myself. They are my friends, I meet them everywhere, every day. My experience of Jews is well rounded, and so I can write about how they live at home with their families, with their wives, how they love and how they hate. Because I know. It's different for a writer living in Ramallah. He cannot write about anything other than settlers or soldiers at the checkpoints - whereas I can write a short story about myself and a Jewish friend discussing love and the universe, a writer in Ramallah couldn't even imagine that. And he doesn't need to either, because the Jew is the occupying force, and you don't write about occupying forces as anything other than occupying forces."