Amos Oz: A humanist in the darkness

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines Amos Oz’s political and social outlook through four topoi that constitute his books, articles and correspondence: The first concerns his dialectics with Israel’s Mediterranean character, from his affinity to Albert Camus to his treatment of Ashdod as a metaphor for Mediterraneanism; the second is the Zionist-crusader analogy in the literature and poetry of his contemporaries, and particularly A. B. Yehoshua and Dahlia Ravikovitch; the third topic is Oz’s oppositionality to the political actualization of messianism on the gamut from Ben-Gurion to “Gush Emunim”; and the fourth issue relates to Oz’s controversy with what I have branded as “Canaanite Messianism,” namely those who promote expansionism toward Greater Israel. Together, these combined perspectives unfold Oz’s humanist vision on the future of the State of Israel.