The following is from Israeli novelist David Grossman’s Seven Days: A Diary, October 2001, in Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo
MONDAY
I keep reading hostile remarks about Israel in the European press, even accusations that Israel is responsible for the world’s current plight. It infuriates me to see how eagerly some people use Israel as a scapegoat. As if Israel were the one, simple, almost exclusive reason that justifies the terrorism and hatred now targeted against the West. It’s also astounding that Israel was not invited to participate in the antiterrorism coalition, while Syria and Iran — Syria and Iran! — were.
I feel that these and other events (the Durban conference and its treatment of Israel; anti-Israeli Islamic rhetoric and racism) are causing a profound realignment in Israelis’ perception of themselves. Most Israelis believed that they’d somehow broken free of the tragedy of Jewish fate. Now they feel that that tragedy is once again encompassing them. They’re suddenly aware of how far they still are from the Promised Land, how widespread stereotypical attitudes about “the Jew” still are, and how common anti-Semitism is, hiding all too often behind a screen of (supposedly legitimate) extremist anti-Israel sentiments.
I’m highly critical of Israel’s behavior, but in recent weeks I’ve felt that the international media’s hostility to it has not been fed solely by the actions of the Sharon government. A person feels such things deeply, under the skin. I feel them with a kind of shiver that runs back to my most primeval memories, to the times when the Jew was not perceived as a human being of flesh and blood but was rather always a symbol of the Other. A chilling metaphor. Last night I heard the host of a BBC program end his interview with an Arab spokesman with the following remark (I’m quoting from memory): “So you say that Israel is the cause of all the troubles that are poisoning the world today. Thank you, and I’d like to wish our audience good night.”
