David Grossman's 'Hollow Leadership' speech

The annual memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin is the moment when we stop a little, remember Rabin the man, the leader. And we also look at ourselves, at Israeli society, at its leadership, at the state of the national mood, at the state of the peace process. From our place as private individuals, in front of the great national processes.

It is not easy to observe ourselves this year. There was a war. Israel raised a mighty military muscle, but behind it, its short-sightedness and fragility were exposed. It became clear to us that the military power in our hands cannot ultimately guarantee our existence alone. Mainly we discovered that Israel is in a deep crisis, deeper than we feared, in almost all of its life systems. I speak here tonight as someone whose love for this country is a difficult and complicated love. And yet it is unequivocal. And as someone whose alliance he always had with the land became his disaster - a blood alliance. I am a completely secular person, and even so, in my eyes, the establishment and the very existence of the State of Israel are a kind of miracle that happened to us as a people. A political, national, human miracle. I don't forget it for a single moment. Even when many things in the reality of our lives infuriate and depress me, even when the miracle goes down to the pennies of routine and misery, of corruption and cynicism. Even when reality looks like a bad parody of this miracle, I always remember. And it is from these feelings that I speak to you tonight.

"Look at the land, because we were very wasteful," wrote the poet Shaul Tschernihovsky in Tel Aviv in 1938. He lamented that in the bosom of the earth in the Land of Israel we bury young people at the peak of their love time after time. The death of young people is a terrible, crying waste, but no less terrible is the feeling that for many years now the State of Israel has criminally wasted not only the lives of its sons, but also the miracle that happened to it, the great and rare opportunity given to it by history, the opportunity to create a reformed state here, Enlightened, democratic, that will act according to Jewish and universal values.

A country that will be a national home and a refuge, but not only a refuge, but also a place that will give new meaning to Jewish existence. A country where an important and essential part of its Jewish identity, of its Jewish ethos, will be an attitude of complete equality and respect for its non-Jewish citizens. And look what happened.

See what happened to the young, daring country, full of passion and soul that was here, how, as if in a process of accelerated aging, Israel jumped from the stage of infancy and childhood and youth to a permanent state of grumpiness, and laxity and a feeling of sourness. How did it happen? When did we even lose hope that we could ever live another, better life? More than that, how do we continue to stand on the sidelines and watch as if mesmerized by madness and rudeness, violence and racism taking over our home?

“And I ask you“

And I ask you, how is it possible that a nation with the powers of creation, life, and renewal like ours, a nation that has known how to raise itself from the ashes time and time again, finds itself today, precisely when it has such a large military force, in a state of such laxity and helplessness, in a state where it is once again victim? But this time he is a victim of himself, of his anxieties, of his short-sightedness.

One of the difficult things that the last war sharpened is the feeling that these days there is no king in Israel. That our leadership is hollow, our military and political leadership is hollow. I'm not even talking now about the obvious failures of the conduct of the war, of the abandonment of the home front, nor about the big and small corruptions, I'm talking about the fact that the people who lead Israel today are unable to connect the Israelis to their identity, and certainly not to the healthy and vital and violating parts of the identity this. To those parts of identity and memory and foundational values, which will give us hope and strength. That they will be antidotes to the weaknesses of the mutual guarantee, of the attachment to the land, that they will give some meaning to the exhausting and discouraging struggle for existence.

The main contents that Israel's leadership today fills the shell of its government with are mainly contents of anxieties on the one hand, and intimidation on the other. of the power maximization, the wink of the combine, of tyranny in all that is dear to us. In this sense, they are not real leaders, certainly they are not leaders that a people in such a complicated and lost way needs.

Sometimes it seems that the sounding board of their thinking, of their historical memory, of their vision, of what they really care about, exists only in the tiny space between two newspaper headlines or between two investigations by the attorney general. Look at those who lead us. Not in all of them of course, but in too many of them. See their frightened, suspicious, sweaty way of acting. their conduct, the lawyer and the inclusion. After all, it is ridiculous to even hope that Torah will come out of them, that some kind of vision will suddenly emerge, or even just an original, truly creative, daring, far-reaching idea.

When was the last time the prime minister devised or made a move that has the power to open up a new horizon for Israelis, a better future? When did he initiate a social or cultural or value movement? And not only did he react, react frantically, to the moves imposed on him by others? Mr. Prime Minister, I do not say these things out of feelings of anger or revenge. I waited long enough not to respond on the spur of the moment. You will not be able to excuse the words of the evening by saying that no man is caught in his time of sorrow. Of course I am filled with sorrow, but more than I am angry - I am in pain. This country hurts me and what you and your friends are doing to it.

Believe me, your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on your ability to stand up and take action. Yitzhak Rabin turned to the path of peace with the Palestinians not because he felt great affection for them or their leader. Even then, as I recall, the general opinion was that we did not have a partner and we had nothing to talk about with them.

Rabin decided to take action because he very wisely recognized that Israeli society would not be able to continue to exist for long in a state of unresolved conflict. He realized, long before many others, that living in a climate of violence, of occupation, of terror, of anxiety and hopelessness exacts a price that Israel cannot withstand. These things are still true today. even more sharply. Soon we will talk about the partner we have or don't have. Before that we will look at ourselves.

For over 100 years we have been living in a struggle. We, the citizens of this conflict, were born into war and brought up to it, and in a way we were also programmed for it. Maybe that's why we sometimes think that this madness in which we've been living for 100 years is the real thing, the only thing. It is the only life that is meant for us, and that we have no possibility or maybe even right to aspire to another life. By our sword we shall live and by our sword we shall die and forever you shall eat sword.

“Maybe this is the explanation for the indifference“

Perhaps this is the explanation for the indifference with which we accept the complete failure of the peace process, a failure that has been going on for years and is claiming more and more victims. This is also how we can explain the lack of reaction of most of us to the rude kick that democracy suffered with the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as a senior minister with the support of the Labor Party. With the appointment of this executor as the director of the state's fire brigade.

These are also some of the reasons why in an incredibly short time Israel has deteriorated into heartlessness, downright cruelty towards the poor and suffering within it. This indifference to the fate of hungry people, the elderly, the sick and disabled, all the weak - this equanimity of the State of Israel to the trafficking of women, or to the exploitation under conditions of slavery to the foreign workers, and the deep institutionalized racism to the Arab minority.

When all of this happens here completely naturally, without shock, without protest, as if it is self-evident, that we will never be able to turn his wheel back, when all this happens, I begin to fear that even if peace comes tomorrow, and even if we return to some kind of normality tomorrow, maybe we are already too late the time for a full recovery.

Ladies and gentlemen, the disaster that happened to my family and me with the fall of our son, Uri, does not give me special rights in the public debate. But it seems to me that facing death and loss also brings with it a kind of sobriety and lucidity, at least in what concerns the distinction between the main and the secondary, between what can be achieved and what cannot be achieved. Every sane person in Israel, and I would add and say - also in Palestine, today knows exactly the lines of the possible similarity to the conflict between the two peoples.

Every sane person with us and among them also knows in the depths of his heart the difference between dreams and wishes of the heart, and what can be achieved at the end of negotiations. And whoever does not know this, whoever refuses to acknowledge this, is already out of the question. Whether he is Jewish or Arab, he is trapped in his fanaticism, the hermetic, and therefore he is not a partner.

Let's take a moment to look at who should be our partner. The Palestinians put Hamas in their head, which refuses to negotiate with us, refuses even to recognize us. What can be done in this situation, what else is left for us to do? Continue to strangle them more and more? To continue killing hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, the vast majority of whom are innocent civilians like us, to kill them and be killed ad infinitum?

Turn to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert, turn to them beyond the head of Hamas, turn to the moderates among them, those who, like you and me, oppose Hamas and its path. Address the Palestinian people, speak to their deep sorrow and wound, acknowledge their ongoing suffering, nothing will detract from this from you nor Israel's position in future negotiations.

Only the hearts will open a little to each other and this opening has enormous power. Simple human compassion has the power of Eitan Teva - precisely in such a situation of stagnation and enmity. For once look at them neither through the rifle scope nor through a closed barrier. You will see there a tortured people no less than us, a depressed and conquered and hopeless people.

Of course, the Palestinians are also to blame for the impasse. It is certain that they also have a significant part in the failure of the peace process. But look at them for a moment in a different way, not only the extremists within them, not only those who have an alliance of interests with our extremists. Look at the vast majority of this unfortunate people, whose fate is tied to their fate whether we like it or not.

Go to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert, don't keep looking for reasons why not to talk to them. You gave up on the one-sided convergence, and well you did, but don't leave an empty space. It will immediately be filled with violence, destruction. Talk to them, give them an offer that the moderates among them can accept, they are much more numerous than the media shows us.

Make them such an offer that they have to decide if they accept it or if they prefer to remain hostages of fanatical Islam. Come to them with the bravest and most serious plan that Israel is able to present and offer, with the proposal that every Israeli and Palestinian whose eyes in their heads know is the limit of our refusal and concession and theirs.

we do not have time. If we procrastinate, in a short time we will miss the amateurism of Palestinian terrorism. We will fall on our heads and shout - how did we not activate all the flexibility of our thought, all the Israeli creations to dislodge our enemy from their self-entrapment.

Just as there is a "no choice" war, there is also a "no choice" peace. Because there is no choice anymore. We have no choice and they have no choice. And a peace of "no choice" should be approached with the same determination and creativity as one embarks on a war with no choice. Because there is no choice. And those who think there is a choice, or that time plays in our favor, do not grasp the dangerous deep processes we are already in the middle of.

And in general, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps we should remind you again that if any Arab leader sends a signal of peace, even if it is the lightest and most hesitant, you must respond to it. You must immediately check his sincerity and seriousness. You have no moral right not to comply with it. You owe it to those whose lives you will demand to sacrifice if another war breaks out.

Therefore - if President Assad says that Syria wants peace, even if you don't believe him and we are all suspicious of him, you must offer him a meeting with him one day. Don't wait even one day. After all, when you went to the last war, you didn't even wait an hour. You attacked with all your strength, with all your weapons, with all the power of destruction.

Why is it that when there is some flicker of peace you immediately reject it, text it away? What do you have to lose? You suspect him, suspect the Syrian president - go and present him with conditions that will reveal his plots. Offer him a peace process that will last several years and only at the end, if he meets all the conditions and all the limitations, will he get back the Golan. Commit him to a process of prolonged dialogue, act so that this possibility is formulated for the first time in the minds of his people as well. Help the moderates who surely exist there too. Try to shape reality, not just be its collaborator. That's what you were chosen for, that's exactly what you were chosen for.

Friends, of course not everything depends on our own actions. There are strong and great forces operating in the region and in the world. And some of them, like Iran, like extreme Islam, demand our harm. And yet so much depends on what we do. In what we will be.

The differences of opinion today between right and left are not really big. The vast majority of Israeli citizens already understand, not all of them with excessive enthusiasm, understand and know what the outline for resolving the conflict will look like. Most of us understand, therefore, that the country will be divided. that a Palestinian state will be established, why then do we continue to exhaust ourselves in an internal skirmish that has been going on for 40 years. 40 years!

Why does the political leadership continue to reflect the position of the extremists and not the majority of the public? Much worse would be our situation if we reached this national agreement ourselves before the circumstances - external pressure or a new intifada or God forbid another war - would force us to do so. If we do this, we will save ourselves years of decline and error, years in which we will cry out again and again - "Look at the land because we were very wasteful".

From where I stand now I am asking - calling, to everyone who is listening, to the young people who have returned from the war, who know that they will be the ones who will demand to pay the price of the next war, to Jewish and Arab citizens, to people of the right and left, to the secular, to the religious. Stop for a moment! Look at the edge of the abyss. Think how close we are to losing what we created here. Ask yourself if it's not time to come to your senses, to get out of this paralysis, to finally claim for ourselves the life we deserve to live.