Boston – Israeli author Amos Oz was born in Jerusalem in 1939, the son of parents with roots in Lithuania and Ukraine. In his 2002 autobiographical novel, A Tale of Love and Darkness, his father recalls how the walls in Europe were covered in graffiti: “Jews, go to Palestine.” Then, when he reached Palestine, the walls were scrawled with the words “Jews, get out of Palestine.”
This memory visibly colors Oz’s perspective as a Jew and an Israeli. He is an unapologetic Zionist. He was also one of the first Israelis to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the Six-Day War. In a 1967 article in the Labour newspaper Davar, he wrote that “even unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation”.