3
P
rince
of
A
sturias
A
wards
1981-2014. S
peeches
Laureates. Excerpts
As you read a foreign novel, you are actually invited into other people’s living rooms, into their
nurseries and studies, into their bedrooms. You are invited into their secret sorrows, into their
family joys, into their dreams.
Which is why I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a
moral quality. I believe imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other
will make you not only a better businessperson or a better lover, but even a better person.
Part of the tragedy between Jew and Arab is the inability of so many of us, Jews and Arabs, to
imagine each other. Really imagine each other: the loves, the terrible fears, the anger, the passion.
There is too much hostility between us, too little curiosity.
Jews and Arabs have something essential in common: they have both been handled, coarsely
and brutally, by Europe’s violent hand in the past. The Arabs, through imperialism, colonialism,
exploitation and humiliations. The Jews, through discrimination, persecution, expulsion, and
ultimately mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
One would have thought that two victims, and especially two victims of the same oppressor,
develop between them a sense of solidarity. Alas, this is not the way it works, neither in novels,
nor in life. Some of the worst conflicts are indeed between two victims of the same oppressor; two
children of the same violent parent don’t necessarily like each other. Often they see in each other
the image of the abusive parent.
Which is exactly the case between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. While the Arabs regards
Israelis as latter-day crusaders, an extension of the white, colonizing Europe, many Israelis, for their
part, regards the Arabs as the new incarnation of our past oppressors, those repsonsible for carrying
out pogroms and Nazis.
This situation charges Europe with a particular responsibility for the solution of the Israeli-
Arab conflict: instead of wagging their fingers at either side, Europeans should extend empathy,
understanding and help to both sides. You no longer have to choose between being pro-Israel and
being pro-Palestine. You have to be pro-Peace.
Amos Oz
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Literature
2007
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 26/10/2007.
