“Zionism Has Exhausted Itself”
An Interview with Amos Elon
By Ari Shavit
Ha’aretz
The young people at the news desk weren’t quite sure who he was. The name sounded familiar but they weren’t sure from where. A few had heard about one of his books. A few had once used another book as a textbook. But many people don’t really know who Amos Elon is. The man who was once the preeminent journalist in Israel has been totally erased from the memory. The man who was the chief chronicler of the Israeli story has ceased to register in the Israeli consciousness. He is much better known to readers of the New York Review of Books than to readers of Ha’aretz.
He was born in 1925, in Vienna, and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1933. In the 1940s, he was one of Tel Aviv’s prominent young intellectuals – and was close to Uri Avnery and influenced by him. He wrote a patriotic book about the War of Independence which he’d rather forget.
In the early 1950s, Amos Elon quickly became a star. For Haaretz, he wrote several outstanding series of articles on subjects such as the rift among the kibbutzim, the life of immigrants and the “second Israel” (the underprivileged sectors of Israeli society). Elon became the protege of Haaretz publisher and editor-in-chief Gershom Schocken, was sent to Europe and later spent six years as Ha’aretz’s Washington correspondent. In 1970, he published his book, “The Israelis,” which was an immediate international success (it was published in English in 1971 as “The Israelis: Founders and Sons”), and subsequently left the paper. In 1978, in wake of the peace process with Egypt, he returned to Ha’aretz and remained with the paper until 1986.
In the small Italian village where he lives, Elon wrote his books about Herzl, the Rothschild family and the history of German Jewry. The current publication of the Hebrew version of “The Pity of it All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933” (which was published in English in 2002) is coinciding with a significant biographical moment: Last month, Elon packed up the apartment that he still kept in Jerusalem. Our conversation took place among the piles of objects slated to be given away and the piles of books due to be sent home, to Tuscany.
He looks much younger than his 79 years. He once wrote that Israeli faces tend to wrinkle as if from a lot of gazing straight at the sun. His face, however, is almost smooth.
If Elon has feelings, he keeps them hidden deep inside. At least outwardly, he is serious, German, stern. A devotee of human rights but not overflowing with brotherly love. Seemingly devoid of warmth and empathy, he is a man of high standards. A man of high-level journalism and high culture. His erudition is enviable.
A few of Elon’s friends say something about him that he himself isn’t ready to admit: His decision to leave Israel essentially derives from deep despair. From a sense that Israel doesn’t have a chance. But it’s also the man’s personality structure that has made him not want to belong. Not to participate. To be an observer from a distance.
Maybe the young people at the news desk are right: Amos Elon doesn’t interest anyone here anymore. He’s no longer relevant. But maybe they’re wrong. And not only because Elon is a supremely gifted journalist. Not only because the international intelligentsia still perceives him as a thoughtful Israeli voice. And not only because he is an inseparable part of the history of this newspaper. But because Amos Elon epitomized an attitude that characterizes a large part of the Israeli elite. In his words and his life, Amos Elon expresses the deep aversion to the new Israel. The nationalistic, religious, un-European Israel. This is apparently the reason why Amos Elon is leaving us. He is turning back the clock, going back to being a European Jew.
Amos Elon, looking over the list of books you’ve written in the past decades – “The Israelis,” “Herzl,” “The Rothschilds,” “The Pity of It All” on German-Jewish history – it’s like the Zionist movie is being rewound; the whole trajectory is from Israel backward.
Elon: “From Israel outward. And the reason is very simple. It’s also related to my leaving Haaretz. Nothing has changed here in the last 40 years. The problems are exactly the same as they always were. The solutions were already known back then. But no one paid attention to them. And I found myself repeating them. I found myself saying the same thing all the time. And I started to bore myself. The dialogue wasn’t fruitful. It was a useless dialogue. I was a lone voice in the wilderness.”
Full Interview: counterpunch.org