Interview met Gideon Levy - Main contents

Voor wie engels leest, hier een interessant interview met Gideon Levy, een van de door mij zeer gerespecteerde kritische Israeli’s. Hier.

Een fragment:

I’ve noticed a shift in your own writings, which seem to have become increasingly radical in their criticism. I’m thinking in particular of a recent column in which you argued that “[d]efining Israel as a Jewish state condemns us to living in a racist state”, and urged people to “recognize the racist nature of the state”. Has there been a shift in your writings, do you think, and if so, what’s behind it?

It’s not a shift, it’s a process. My views became more and more radical throughout the years, in contrast to the opposite stream of the entire society - the more Israel becomes nationalistic, the more the government becomes violent and aggressive, like in ‘Cast Lead’, like in the Second Lebanese War, like with the flotilla, all those developments put me in a much more radical position, obviously, because there is much more to protest against. So yes, I am becoming more and more radical, but you can’t put a finger to say one day I became a radical. It’s an ongoing process.

Would you accept the label ‘anti-Zionist’ to characterise your views?

It depends what is ‘Zionism’. Because Zionism is a very fluid concept - who can define what is Zionism? If Zionism means the right of the Jews to have a state, I am a Zionist. If Zionism means occupation, I’m an anti-Zionist. So I never know how to answer this question. If Zionism means to have a Jewish state at the expense of being a democratic state, then I am anti-Zionist, because I truly believe those two definitions are contradictory - ‘Jewish’ and ‘democratic’. For me, Israel should be a democratic state.

So would it be right to say that you support a state for Jews, but not a ‘Jewish state’ in the sense of a state that artificially maintains a Jewish majority?

Absolutely. It should be a state for Jews that will be a just state, a democratic state, and if there will be a Palestinian majority, there will be a Palestinian majority. The idea is that Jews have to have their place, but it can’t be exclusively theirs, because this land is not exclusively theirs.

En hier een artikel dat ik onlangs in vertaling op mijn weblog plaatste.