By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Yitzhak Laor is many things. First and foremost, he is a writer.
A poet, playwright, author and journalist, he is as Israeli as they come — a Sabra, born in the same year as the Jewish State itself, to parents who emigrated to Palestine from Nazi-occupied Europe. He is an advocate for peace and for reconciliation with the Arab populations, a thorn in the side of his country’s establishment. These days, he says, he is a pessimist.
Talking to a wide circle of Kadima members at the Sand Point Education Center, Laor promised not to be too pessimistic, “because people don’t come on Sunday morning” to hear bad news.
“So,” he promised, “I will not prognosticate because I don’t know.”
While keeping that promise in nearly two hours of off-the-cuff remarks and answers to questions, he showed the weariness of a fighter worn down by the struggle, the fire of youth mellowing to something passing for wisdom as he and his country reach 60.
Laor has published two dozen books, including a novel, Ecce Homo, in 2002, and two story collections, a play, collections of his essays, and several volumes of poetry. Best known for the poetry of protest, he also writes pointed political commentaries and has been jailed and censored in his native land for his outspoken opposition to Israeli government policies and for his refusal to serve in the occupied territories.
In the 1980’s, he wrote poetry condemning the war in Lebanon, and in 1990, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refused to sign the Prime Minister’s Prize for Poetry, which had been awarded to Laor. In 1985, Israeli censorship prevented the staging of his play, Ephraim Goes Back to the Army. He won a case in the Israeli High Court that ended official banning of theatrical works in Israel. In 2007, he was awarded his latest accolade, the Amichai Poetry Prize. His political writings regularly appear in Ha’aretz, the New Left Review and the London Review of Books. His literary criticism appears regularly in Ha’aretz. A number of the Tel Aviv resident’s essays and a scattering of poems are available in English translation as well.
Referring to the situation in Gaza, where Israel has blockaded all but the most urgent humanitarian assistance, including blocking fuel shipments to keep the power on, Laor says: “Gaza is basically one large refugee camp.
“Gaza is surrounded by two American-supported projects, Israel on one side and Egypt on the other. What is at stake now is the real extinction of another nation — not the possibility, but a real one,” he says.
Laor talked about the separation barrier and of the problems faced by Palestinians who have found their villages cut off from the towns that support them. He spoke of the difficulty of getting around on the old roads, some of which he says are little more than cart paths left over from the Ottoman Empire, while Israelis use modern bypass roads that Palestinians are banned from using. Laor also says that Israeli positions in border talks leave all the significant water resources in its own hands.
Although he was speaking to an overwhelmingly sympathetic audience, Laor did not let them off lightly — telling the nearly universally pro-peace room that Israel is emboldened in its harsh treatment of Palestinians and its refusal to engage with Hamas by the unquestioning support it gets from the United States.
“The American Jewish position has been almost identical with the Israeli government position in the past few years,” Laor says. “When Israelis say, ‘the world is watching,’ they don’t mean India or Kenya.”
When it comes to listening to world opinion, it is the attitudes of the U.S. and the European Union that are the prime concerns of Israeli policy makers, he says.
“If I say why I am pessimistic, it’s because I don’t see any restraining power on Israel’s [ambitions] to take the territory,” he says.
Asked about the oft-stated complaint that Palestinian textbooks have a distorted picture of Jews and Israelis that promotes hatred, Laor asked whether people believed that when children see their parents being humiliated by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints and in their homes or towns, that they need textbooks to learn to hate them. He pointed out that the situation has gone on for so long that children who grew up under occupation now have children of their own.
He mentioned a commission he had been given to talk about poetry at his son’s high school. After paying him for the day, Laor says, the school principal told him that, while his poetry was beautiful, she would not use it in her school because, “‘I am teaching the children for the army.’
“When you talk to the Palestinians, talk to them about the books in their country,” Laor says. “I’m concerned with the books in my country.”
Internally, Laor described Israeli society as being fractured along fault lines of ethnicity and class. He says that Israel has abandoned its historical social-democratic system and now has one of the highest levels of disparity between the top and bottom of the economic ladder of any country in the world — even more so than the U.S. émigrés from the former Soviet bloc who can barely communicate with Ashkenazi Jews from previous waves of migration, he says.
And the divisions between Askenazim and Mizrachi Jews remain deeply embedded. What holds them together is a growing fear and distrust of Arab populations, both inside the country and out.
As a prize-winning author, Yitzhak Laor has the choice of anywhere in the world to live. But, he says, he’s not going anywhere. A son of Israel, he says; despite his pessimism, he believes the promise of the land is still worth fighting for.