Great Regulars: Reading To the End of the Land [by David Grossman]

becomes even more moving when you discover that, though a peace activist, he supported the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 2006. He then held a press conference with Oz and another writer, A.B.Yehoshua, calling for a ceasefire and a settlement. Two days later, his son, Uri, was killed by an anti-tank missile in Lebanon.

The point is that the foundation of Israel was, in many respects, an act of the creative imagination. Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, was a writer. He believed that the Jews could not be free until their own land. From the 1920s Tel Aviv was packed with Jewish writers from Eastern Europe. And the idea of an Israeli state was a left--not right---wing Utopian dream. She was written into existence. The idea of Israel, if not the actuality, is a work of art.

from Bryan Appleyard: Selected Articles: Israel and Self-Consciousness

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