Nobel Winner's Harsh Truths in Israel

Ulf Andersen, Getty images

At age 83, Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel Laureate, may resemble a frail little sparrow, but she always flies straight for the storm. In her native land, she challenged apartheid, both in her novels of “inward testimony”, as she describes them, and through her political action.
When Gordimer was invited to attend the International Writers' Festival in Jerusalem this month, many liberals wanted her to boycott the event in solidarity with Palestinians. She refused. Gordimer, who is Jewish, has been the victim of repeated censorship in her own land, and she isn't about to let anyone or any regime tell her where she shouldn't go, or what she should or shouldn't say. Her voice may be soft but it carries a crisp righteousness. To be a practitioner of what she calls “Witness Literature”, she says, you need “imaginative tenacity”. She added: “The extremity of human experience doesn't make a writer, the predilection has to be there, just like aggression in a boxer.”
And her predilection is to speak her mind, even if it reddens the face of her Israel hosts. After her lecture, I caught up with her and asked a few questions.

Q: Ever since ex-President Jimmy Carter compared South Africa to Israel, ‘apartheid” is a dirty word around here. Do you think it honestly applies to Israel's treatment of Palestinians?
A: It's not apartheid because both people have historical claims to the land. I'd have to be an archeologist to know whether there are ancient remains that prove the Jews and the Palestinians –whatever they were called then –were both here at the same time.

Q; So it's not apartheid?
A: There's only one valid Comparison between South African situation and this one, and that is the terrible behavior of the Israeli army and police in occupied territories. Gaza is apparently in a state of ruin, and I have been to the West Bank and have seen some of the consequences. For instance, the (Israeli built security) wall going right through the front door and the living room of people's houses, cutting them off from their neighbors' or from part of their own land. I'm comparing the brutality. It's the same as it was in apartheid. It shocks and saddens me very much.

Q: Is there any positive lesson that Israelis and Palestinians can learn from the South African experience?
A: Indeed, we avoided a terrible civil war because the leaders swallowed all of their hatred and resentment and sat down, as we are sitting at this table, and talked. In my humble opinion, somehow this has got to take place here. You have to come to a just division here of frontiers and that begins with Israel going back to 1967 and giving back the occupied territories. That's the start of it. And on the other side, it begins with Hamas and Islamic Jihad no longer saying that Israel has no right whatever to exist. If they recognize each other's existence on whatever harsh terms exist, there could be peace.

by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem