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Transcript

'Ladies and gentlemen, this is not futurology'

What Amos Oz warned us of nine years ago

Amos Oz, Israel’s great writer and public intellectual, died in 2018, at age 79. Three years before that, he spoke before the Institute for National Security Studies, in Tel Aviv, laying out his strategic vision for Israel. At the time, his talk made some waves, and certainly when he died, many Israelis went back to rewatch his lecture, realizing that Oz had been, perhaps even consciously so, that this was the last will and testament he was leaving to the country he so loved.

Of course, during his lifetime, Oz was described by some of those who didn’t like his worldview as a “extreme leftist.” (Even then, to be labeled as such a dangerous type, one didn’t need to do much more than express the belief that the Palestinians are human beings.) “Extremist” is far from a fitting description for Amos Oz. What he was was a Zionist who was also a democrat and a humanist too. And as you will hear, when you view this short pair of excerpts from that talk, he was a realist too.

Oz’s prescience, and the very specific way in which he described the disaster scenario toward which he saw Israel sleepwalking, is uncanny and unnerving.

(By the way, he refers to the possibility of Israel experiencing something similar to what we saw “last summer.” The reference is to 2014, when Israel fought a month-long mini-war with Hamas, in what was called here Operation Protective Edge.)

Tomorrow, I will add another excerpt or two from the same speech, as he made a number of points that are no less true today than they were nine years ago. If you wish to view the entire speech, which is all of 30 minutes long, and with English captions, you can do that here

A blog about art, politics and shared society in Israel
A blog about art, politics and shared society in Israel
Authors
David B. Green