ABOUT THE SOFT AND THE DELICATE By Amos Oz

(interview with Ariel Sharon published in the Israeli daily
Davar Dec. 17, 1982)

You can call me anything you like. Call me a monster or a
murderer. Just note that I don't hate Arabs. On the
contrary. Personally, I am much more at east with them, and
especially with the Bedouin, than with Jews. Those Arabs we
haven't yet spoilt are proud people, they are irrational,
cruel and generous. It's the Yids that are all twisted. In
order to straighten them out you have to first bend them
sharply the other way. That, in brief, is my whole ideology.

"Call Israel by any name you like, call it a Judeo-Nazi
state as does Leibowitz. Why not? Better a live Judeo-Nazi
than a dead saint. I don't care whether I am like Ghadafi. I
am not after the admiration of the gentiles. I don't need
their love. I don't need to be loved by Jews like you
either. I have to live, and I intend to ensure that my
children will live as well. With or without the blessing of
the Pope and the other religious leaders from the New York
Times. I will destroy anyone who will raise a hand against
my children, I will destroy him and his children, with or
without our famous purity of arms. I don't care if he is
Christian, Muslim, Jewish or pagan. History teaches us that
he who won't kill will be killed by others. That is an iron
law.

"Even if you'll prove to me by mathematical means that the
present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoral war, I don't care.
Moreover, even if you will prove to me that we have not
achieved and will not achieve any of our aims in Lebanon,
that we will neither create a friendly regime in Lebanon nor
destroy the Syrians or even the PLO, even then I don't care.
It was still worth it. Even if Galilee is shelled again by
Katyushas in a year's time, I don't really care. We shall
start another war, kill and destroy more and more, until
they will have had enough. And do you know why it is all
worth it? Because it seems that this war has made us more
unpopular among the so-called civilised world.

"We'll hear no more of that nonsense about the unique Jewish
morality, the moral lessons of the holocaust or about the
Jews who were supposed to have emerged from the gas chambers
pure and virtuous. No more of that. The destruction of Eyn
Hilwe (and it's a pity we did not wipe out that hornet's
nest completely!), the healthy bombardment of Beirut and
that tiny massacre (can you call 500 Arabs a massacre?) in
their camps which we should have committed with our own
delicate hands rather than let the Phalangists do it, all
these good deeds finally killed the bullshit talk about a
unique people and of being a light upon the nations. No more
uniqueness and no more sweetness and light. Good riddance."

"I personally don't want to be any better than Khomeini or
Brezhnev or Ghadafi or Assad or Mrs. Thatcher, or even Harry
Truman who killed half a million Japanese with two fine
bombs. I only want to be smarter than they are, quicker and
more efficient, not better or more beautiful than they are.
Tell me, do the baddies of this world have a bad time? If
anyone tries to touch them, the evil men cut his hands and
legs off. They hunt and catch whatever they feel like
eating. They don't suffer from indigestion and are not
punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe
the world will then at last begin to fear me instead of
feeling sorry for me. Maybe they will start to tremble, to
fear my madness instead of admiring my nobility. Thank god
for that. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state.
Let them understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to
our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy if one
of our children is murdered - just one! That we might go
wild and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East! If
anything would happen to your child, god forbid, you would
talk like I do. Let them be aware in Washington, Moscow,
Damascus and China that if one of our ambassadors is shot,
or even a consul or the most junior embassy official, we
might start World War Three just like that !" ......We are
talking while sitting on the balcony of the pretty country
house belonging to C. which is situated in a prosperous
Moshav. To the west we see a burning sunset and there is a
scent of fruit trees in the air. We are being served iced
coffee in tall glasses. C. is about fifty years old. He is a
man well known for his (military) actions. He is a strong,
heavy figure wearing shorts but no shirt. His body is tanned
a metallic bronze shade, the colour of a blond man living in
the sun. He puts his hairy legs on the table and his hands
on the chair. There is a scar on his neck. His eyes wander
over his plantations. He spells out his ideology in a voice
made hoarse by too much smoking:

"Let me tell me [sic] what is the most important thing, the
sweetest fruit of the war in Lebanon: It is that now they
don't just hate Israel. Thanks to us, they now also hate all
those Feinschmecker Jews in Paris, London, New York,
Frankfurt and Montreal, in all their holes. At last they
hate all these nice Yids, who say they are different from
us, that they are not Israeli thugs, that they are different
Jews, clean and decent. Just like the assimilated Jew in
Vienna and Berlin begged the anti-Semite not to confuse him
with the screaming, stinking Ostjude, who had smuggled
himself into that cultural environment out of the dirty
ghettos of Ukraine and Poland. It won't help them, those
clean Yids, just as it did not help them in Vienna and
Berlin. Let them shout that they condemn Israel, that they
are all right, that they did not want and don't want to hurt
a fly, that they always prefer being slaughtered to
fighting, that they have taken it upon themselves to teach
the gentiles how to be good Christians by always turning the
other cheek. It won't do them any good. Now they are getting
it there because of us, and I am telling you, it is a
pleasure to watch.

"They are the same Yids who persuaded the gentiles to
capitulate to the bastards in Vietnam, to give it in to
Khomeini, to Brezhnev, to feel sorry for Sheikh Yamani
because of his tough childhood, to make love not war. Or
rather, to do neither, and instead write a thesis on love
and war. We are through with all that. The Yid has been
rejected, not only did he crucify Jesus, but he also
crucified Arafat in Sabra and Shatila. They are being
identified with us and that's a good thing! Their cemeteries
are being desecrated, their synagogues are set on fire, all
their old nicknames are being revived, they are being
expelled from the best clubs, people shoot into their ethnic
restaurants murdering small children, forcing them to remove
any sign showing them to be Jews, forcing them to move and
change their profession.

"Soon their palaces will be smeared with the slogan: Yids,
go to Palestine! And you know what? They will go to
Palestine because they will have no other choice! All this
is a bonus we received from th ...[Message truncated]