“I have never noticed a flash of violence in his personality”

“As a child my father beat, cursed and humiliated me. The violence was creative: he dragged me out of the house and threw me on the doorstep outside. He called me filth. Not a passing loss of mind and not a slap in the face here and there but a routine of sadistic abuse. My crime was myself, “So there was no end to the punishment. He needed to make sure I broke.”

With these painful and shaky words, Galia Oz, the daughter of the late author Amos Oz, opens her new book “Something that disguises itself as love” (Kinneret Zmora Bitan Publishing). This is an autobiographical book that is published, according to Oz the daughter, after many years of fear, silence Indeed, this is no longer a confession of a bad relationship between a father and his daughter, it is perhaps one of the sharpest accusations written in recent years – against the great writers in Israel.

Oz, winner of the Israel Prize, who passed away three years ago, is not alive to give his version. But the shock at the words of his middle daughter made waves in the world of literature and also revealed the wound on which, in a sense, Tolstoy wrote in “Anna Carnina”: “All happy families are alike, every unhappy family – miserable in its own way.”

Many myths have been shattered in the publication of Oz’s claims about her late father. His widow, son and eldest daughter responded and said: “We – Nili, Fanya and Daniel – knew another father. A warm, cordial, attentive father who loved his family with a soul full of concern, devotion and sacrifice. The goat that has drowned in us throughout our lives. Galia decided to sever all contact with us about seven years ago. The claims she made then towards all of us caught us by surprise. Although he did not recognize himself in her accusations, Dad tried and hoped until his last day to talk to her and understand her. “That seemed to him and us to be contrary to reality. Galia’s pain is probably real and heartbreaking, but we remember differently. It’s completely different.”

But it is not just the immediate family who are struck by astonishment. Even close friends, the writers AB Yehoshua and Haim Beer, claim that they do not remember any of the allegations or violent conduct presented. A murky relationship, yes. Violence, no. “It’s so horrible and horrible, it’s hard for me to talk about it,” AB Yehoshua tells Yedioth Ahronoth. “I never heard of it. I just knew they were disconnected.” And Haim Beer says: “I am shaken and heartbroken. I have known Amos well for more than forty years. I have sat with him in one room, and I have never seen any violent side in his personality, nor have I ever heard of it. He was a man with opinions, polemics, Of violence in his personality. “

Galia Oz’s claims come at a turbulent time, and they reveal the wound she apparently carried for many years in which she was cut off from the rest of the family. Oz notes the spirit of the era and the MeToo revolution that helped her emerge from the shadows and reveal her past. Acquaintances say that in recent years, when Amos Oz was on his deathbed, she was pressured to visit her father, but she refused. Even at a funeral her shortcomings stood out. Galia did not sit seven at the family home and did not perform at the ceremony in his memory. The anger burned in her and she disappeared.

“I am sure – that is, I know – that there is a kernel of truth in her words,” Daniel Oz wrote yesterday on his Facebook page in light of his sister’s remarks. “Do not erase her … I do not really know what killed my father slowly, over the last six or seven years: the cancer, or the nightmares and daily insomnia. The cancer, or the one my mother mourned, in repeated road crying, that a girl died. “I saw what happened to my parents with my own eyes. What happened to Galia throughout that time, after she severed all contact with us – I do not know because she did not allow me to find out.”

And behind the reactions it appears that the winds were raging among the members of the Oz family. Relatives say that Nili, the widow, took the words of her middle daughter Galia hard. “She was always rebellious,” said one of the family’s relatives. “It was not always pleasant for Amos. Nor was the fact that she went out with many volunteers on the kibbutz and talked about it in an interview later.” Others point to the breaking point, which began with the writing of Amos Oz’s joint book with his eldest daughter Fanya, “Jews and Words.”

“There has always been a kind of coolness between Galia and the family, but the disconnect intensified after Fanya and Amos’ joint book, ‘Jews and Words,’ which was published in 2014,” says a writer close to the family. “Before that nothing dramatic is known. She was also offended by his coldness towards the children’s books she wrote. He did not like them, to say the least. But the fact that he chose to write a book with one of his daughters while the other was ‘banned’ seems to mean she did not deserve to write with him. “And it reinforces precipitation and memories that may not have been the clearest. We are talking about old days, that a child would be abducted here and there. It is not against the spirit of the time. But the tension with the big sister combined with the dominant father did their thing.”

“Yesterday I bought the book, I started reading, and it shakes my world,” says Marganita Klausner, Amos Oz’s little sister. “This is not the person I knew. I knew there was a disconnect between them, but I did not know the reason. As a therapist I can not doubt the testimony of an abused person, so I try to keep the family affiliation away. I have never seen events of the kind Galia describes. “True and I could not help her. It’s sad from all directions. Yesterday I corresponded with Galia and sent her a big hug.”

In the book, Galia claims violence that does not only end with terrorism, but with terror that the father’s courage has ruled with a high hand. Starting with the relationship between him and his wife Nili and ending with the relationship of both of them to the daughter. “My father beat my mother,” she writes, “it happened in my presence. But she canceled herself in his face, and in cases where she dared to show anger and pain he trampled and silenced her. When it came to me they were one front. She cooperated with him and found excuses to stay away. “I was rejected and hated, but I was not completely given up … there was terrorism at home and there was constant pretense in front of strangers. I write the word terrorism because the threat of violence was always in the air, and that was enough to sow terror and gain control.”

Even after Oz’s death, the suffering and hardships from the murky relationship between the daughter and her father haunted her after she discovered that he had spread slander against her. “Older people know, more or less, what makes a libel a criminal offense in the rulebook, but only someone who has been the victim of harassment, boycott, social bullying or close contact with a psychopath will be able to understand how a deliberate lie has the power to domesticate and destroy a person, quite simply. “Literally. Not nearly, not maybe, not about, not subject to interpretation,” she writes.

“I am sorry from the bottom of my heart that such a magnificent building caused cracks, but I have no idea what was there,” says Prof. Yigal Schwartz. “I edited the book that Nurit Gretz wrote about, and there were things related to the privacy of the individual – not things that Galia wrote about – and Nurit asked us to omit them. For this reason the book was delayed for a year and edited and written over and over again. I really liked Amos Oz, but he was a public figure. “It could not be that he would be a public figure until his death, and then he would only belong to the family. Surely Amos Oz was not a simple man. You can never know what is going on in a person’s house.”

The one who was not surprised yesterday is Yehuda Atlas, a good friend of Galia, who heard the words from her and on Friday received her book. “I have no doubt that the detractors will make fun of the fact that Galia is a disgruntled girl who digs into a family conflict that is of no interest to anyone, and that is not true,” he says. “Galia is a sensitive woman and an intelligent writer. She does not see blacks and does not enjoy digging, she is a woman who faces forward, her five ‘Shakshuka’ books are award-winning, and this book is also excellently written. It has a back-and-forth movement, both in descriptions and reflections and interpretation. Brings from experts on the subject of narcissism. “

Atlas believes in Galia’s poignant remarks, despite his great love for the writer’s strength. “I believe in Galia and believe in Galia,” he adds. “She is a very trustworthy person, she is a wonderful mother to her two children and a wonderful wife to her husband. If Galia wrote this we should all sit, read and reflect on the duplication of character that many people, if not all of us have. Amos Oz is the golden prince of us all, of the left liberals who want To live in social and moral cleanliness. And here you suddenly discover other things about him. Most human beings have a double bottom. The gap between the way we show ourselves and who we are within is similar to that between positive and negative. Even today many people live among us who are not nice and more, But they write important things. “

And in this storm stands the public and literary figure of Amos Oz. Does the literature of someone who has won immense readers’ love, in Israel and around the world, stand up to the onslaught of accusations of physical and mental abuse of his daughter? “There are things that are unforgivable and have no statute of limitations, and the history of Hebrew literature needs to be rewritten,” the author Matan Hermoni claims in reference to the affair. “And anyone who’s engaged in literature and is currently commenting on other public matters is trying to divert the gaze from the horror play that is going on right now. And yes, it’s really, really unpleasant to see.”

On the other hand, Prof. Menachem Perry is shocked by the deletion. “People called me today and told me they were going to throw Amos’ books out of the house,” he says. “I told a good friend, but Tolstoy’s personality also had problems, so throw away his books too? And she said, ‘But he was from another century.'”

And as someone who knew Oz personally, what do you think about the allegations?
“I have no idea about it, and I do not believe it is true. It seems to me that she just freaked out. Why has she waited until now? Amos had a lot of masks, but not such.”

“You can’t take from Amos Oz his assets – his books, nor his public personality,” says Atlas. “I do not boycott anyone. Galia knew that things would cause a big storm. Now she is locked in her house. Her father was a much-loved character, and suddenly the myth shatters and breaks, but that is the reality. It is very pleasant for us to err in illusions and think good things about certain people. What is happening and what happened in the backyard. “