chapter 10 Betrayal and Revenge in Amos Oz’s Judas

I

I came across a clear articulation of the central idea that emerges from Amos Oz’s last novel, Judas,1 in an op-ed in the liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz.The Pales- tinian Israeli columnist Odeh Bisharat writes—referring to the 1948 war in Palestine—that “the book’s central question is whether there wasn’t another way than the forceful, cruel one of [the Israeli prime minister] Ben-Gurion? Wasn’t it possible to establish a state for one nation [Jewish] without destroy- ing the present and future of another [Palestinian]?”2 Indeed, this is the crucial question that Oz’s novel raises: Was the founding of a sovereign Jewish state and forced flight of hundreds of thousands of Pales- tinians the only option in 1948? Unlike Bisharat, however, I believe that the hypothetical alternative sug- gested by Oz in his novel is ultimately unrealizeable, inasmuch as it is, in and of itself, an integral part of Zionist politics. That is why Oz’s ostensibly audacious novel in fact precludes the possibility of undoing Israeli colonialism—the pos- sibility that the Nakba (the expulsion of 750,000 palestinians during the 1948 war) would not have happened in 1948, that Palestinian citizens of Israel would not have been placed under martial law until 1966 or subsequently suffered oppression and discrimination and, of course, that Palestinians would not have had to live under occupation since 1967.

II

Oz’s novel revolves around the fictional character of Shealtiel Abravanel, who is expelled from the Zionist Excutive Committee and the Council of the Jew- ish Agency by David Ben-Gurion [later the first prime minister of the State of Israel], in 1947. He is forced to resign after requesting an appearance before the United Nations Committee on the future of Palestine to express his resis-

1 Amos Oz, Judas, trans. Nicholas de Lange (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). Pub- lished in Hebrew under the title: The Gospel According to Judas (Ha-Besorah ‘Al-pi Yehuda), (Jerusalem: Keter, 2014). 2 Odeh Bisharat, “You Too Are Responsible for the Miserables of Yarmuk, [Hebrew]” Ha’aretz, 13/04/2015.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004377608_012 betrayal and revenge in amos oz’s judas 229 tance to the immediate eastablishment of a Jewish State, and his belief that the Jewish-Arab conflict must be resolved peacefully. In practical terms, he sought to voice opposition to the plan that would later be adopted by the UN, for the partition of Palestine into two separate states—one Jewish and the other Arab. The novel itself is set in Jerusalem, in 1959, years after Abravanel has already passed away. Shmuel Ash, recently abandoned by his girlfriend Yardena, is a student of the history of Jewish attitudes towards Jesus. In return for accomo- dation and a small stipend, Ash works as a companion to a bitter old man, Ger- shom Wald, whose son, Micha Wald was killed in the 1948 War. Micha’s widow, Atalia, who lives with her father-in-law, is the daughter of Shealtiel Abravanel. Ash soon falls in love with Atalia, who treats him with the ambivalence of a femme fatale tormenting a lover. The plot follows Ash and his relationship with the old man—who constantly defends Ben-Gurion—and with Atalia, who lives in the shadow of the injustice done to her father by the very same Ben-Gurion, and the memory of her husband, killed in 1948. In effect, Atalia’s revenge stands at the center of the novel. She avenges her father’s treatment at Ben-Gurion’s hands by bringing a young man into the house to occupy her father-in-law—who represents Ben-Gurion and his generation—thereby emphasizing his age and invalidity. She avenges the death of her husband, who might not have been killed had her father’s political posi- tion been accepted, by exposing the impotence of her husband’s and Ash’s generation of men against Ben-Gurion. The Zionist leader sent them to their deaths and destroyed their ability to act in the world by means of the com- plete, uncompromising, and emasculating control he exercised, as a God-like sovereign. Shealtiel Abravanel’s expulsion by Ben-Gurion is presented in the novel as the removal of a traitor, reflecting Ben-Gurion’s rage. The political dispute between Ben Gurion and Abravanel is portrayed as Ben-Gurion’s revenge for Abravanel’s plan to express his political views, although he had no reason to fear that Abravanel’s political action would have any effect on the Zionist Yeshuv (pre-state Jewish community in Palestine).

III

In the novel, Oz suggests that Abravanel’s betrayal in objecting to the founding of the Jewish State might be understood in light of an alternative reading of the ultimate act of betrayal in Western history: the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscar- iot. Oz in fact suggests that Judas’s act was not an act of betrayal at all, but one of supreme loyalty. Indeed, Abravanel sees himself as a loyal Zionist, despite his