'How to Cure a Fanatic': An interview with dead author Amos Oz, based on his book

In troubled times like those we are living through today, where can words of wisdom and insight be found?

Our political leaders have failed us utterly. Our spiritual counselors offer comfort, but geopolitical analysis is beyond their ken. And our friends and family are as troubled as we are.

Answer: Our great writers.

Not all offer solace. David Grossman wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on March 1, titled “Israel is falling into an abyss.” Reading it made my hair turn even whiter.

So, I propose we consult Amos Oz.

Amos Oz was born in Jerusalem to a family of Revisionist Zionists. He himself was a left-wing Zionist peace activist. At age 14 he left home and joined Kibbutz Hulda, following the suicide of his mother. His first novel, My Michael, was a bestseller.

It seems impossible to consult him – he passed away on December 28, 2018. But more than two decades ago, he gave a series of lectures in Germany, focused on the Mideast conflict. His words were published as a book and updated with a lengthy interview a decade later. The book How to Cure a Fanatic: Israel and Palestine Between Left and Right was first published in 2004.

In this column, I conduct a virtual interview with Oz, one of Israel’s greatest authors, quoting only words from his book. I find his insights remarkably relevant and applicable to today’s plonter [imbroglio], even though they were written years ago. All Oz’s words below are direct quotes from his little book.

The backdrop to Oz’s Berlin lectures was the Geneva Accords. They comprised a draft of a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, negotiated in secret for two years between Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, completed on October 12, 2003.

The agreement did not obligate either side’s government, and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon furiously attacked it, despite broad international support. The two sides, for the umpteenth time, again blew an opportunity to end the conflict. The result has been death and destruction on both sides.

The Report: In your view, is the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian conflict a religious war? A holy war?

Oz: “The fanatics on both sides are hard at work trying to turn what I described as a real estate dispute into a holy war. There is no alternatave to a two-state solution: Israel is next door to Palestine.”

The Report: Is there precedent to a conflict that is resolved peacefully in this manner?

Oz: “My role model is still the peaceful divorce between the Czechs and the Slovaks, when they mutually agreed to dismantle Czechoslovakia into two adjacent nation states. …but trying to push the Israelis and the Palestinians into a honeymoon bed together, immediately after 120 years of bloodshed, hatred, and animosity, does seem absurd.” [Czechoslovakia, reborn in 1989 after the Soviet era, was dissolved by agreement on December 31, 1992, forming the Czech Republic and Slovakia.]

The Report: What is your view of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank?

Oz: “The occupation of the West Bank is corrupting both the occupier and the occupied. It begets intransigence and racism on the Israeli side, humiliation and vindictiveness on the Palestinian side.”

The Report: You are critical of Europe’s position on the Mideast conflict. Why?

Oz: “Who is David here? And who is Goliath? I wish Europe would learn to see the ambiguity of the Israeli-Arab conflict rather than paint it in black and white. If you watch a billion Muslims aiming at the destruction of little Israel, you get a different idea of who is David and who is Goliath!”

The Report: Is the conflict driven by idealism or by fanaticism?

Oz: “The difference between idealism and fanaticism is the distance between devotion and obsession. For the fanatic, but not the idealist, the end justifies the means.”

The Report: So, what then in your view is the true source of this conflict? Is this a clash between the values of East and West as some experts contend?

Oz: “I do not believe in the clash between East and West or between Islam and the secular West. I think the syndrome of the 21st century is the clash between fanatics of all colors and the rest of us.”

The Report: Are the Palestinian refugees truly refugees or are the Arabs just using this to delegitimize Israel?

Oz: “For many years, we Israelis blinded ourselves to the fact that the Palestinian people couldn’t find a home even in Arab countries. We did not want to hear and see this. Those times are past. The two peoples now ought each to realize that the other is real and…know that the other side is not going to go away.”

The Report: Should we accept a “right of return” for some Palestinians?

Oz: “If I were prime minister of Israel, I would not sign any peace agreement that did not resolve the issues of the Palestinian refugees, by resettling them in the State of Palestine. If there is no solution for these people, Israel will have no peace and quiet.”

The Report: Why do you believe Israelis largely oppose a Palestinian state?

Oz: “The boundary of the future Palestinian state will be only 12 kms. (7 miles) at the hip. It means that the boundary of the future Palestinian state will start about 7 kms. (4.2 miles) from our one and only airport. This is not an easy decision for the Israelis to make – and yet, they have to make it!”

The Report: The title of your book is How to Cure a Fanatic. “Fanaticism” is a term for “belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal, particularly for extreme religious or political causes.” 

We have fanatics on both sides of this dispute; some are currently serving in Israel’s government. On the Hamas side, fanatical terrorists continue to pop out of tunnels to attack our soldiers, even though they face near-certain death. They seem to believe that their life after death will be far better than the one before it. So, Amos Oz, how do you cure a fanatic?

Oz: “I have never in my life seen a fanatic with a sense of humor. Nor have I seen a person with a sense of humor becoming a fanatic.

“If I could only compress a sense of humor into a capsule and persuade entire populations to swallow my humor pill, and thus immunize everyone against fanaticism. A sense of humor is the ability to imagine the other, the capacity to recognize the peninsular quality of every one of us. This may be at least a partial defense against the fanatic gene which we all possess.”

RECENTLY, The Wall Street Journal printed leaked statements of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Though he is a Sunni Muslim, he seems to have embraced the extreme we-are-victims ideology of Iranian Shia.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Sinwar says, though Gaza is largely destroyed. “Civilian deaths are necessary sacrifices. Let it be a new Karbala.” [On October 10, 680 CE, Muhammad’s grandson Husayn and his entourage were massacred at Karbala, Iraq; this became the centerpiece of Shia “victim” ideology.]

Between Hamas fanaticism and the fanatical far-right splinter elements driving the Netanyahu government, a compromise appears distant. Using Oz’s criterion, neither side has any humor, nor empathy, for the other.

Perhaps our best hope is for the responsible-adult nations – the US, the EU, and the moderate Arab nations – to put their heads together and impose at least a partial settlement.

Because, reading between Oz’s lines, there is no known cure for fanaticism. ■

The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.

• How to Cure a Fanatic
• Amos Oz
• Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (September 2010) 
• 104 pages; $13.49