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Writer Amos Oz
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epd / imago images
The news caused a sensation in Israel's cultural scene: Galia Oz, daughter of the famous Israeli writer Amos Oz, who died in 2018, claims in her recently published autobiographical book, Something That Disguises As Love, that she was systematically beaten and humiliated by her father as a girl to be.
In the case of Amos Oz, the allegations are particularly serious, as he has been honored with numerous prizes worldwide for his work for peace and against violence - in Germany including the 1992 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and in 2005 the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt.
But daughter Galia is by no means unknown either.
The documentary filmmaker and children's book author has received several awards for her children's books, which have become bestsellers in Israel and have been translated into several languages.
The author speaks clearly in the first chapter about paternal violence, from which the mother was not spared.
It can be read in Hebrew on the website of the reputable Israeli publisher Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir:
“When I was a child, my father would beat me, abuse me, and humiliate me. The violence was inventive: he dragged me out of the house and knocked me on the floor in front of the door. Called me dirt It was neither a temporary loss of control nor an occasional slap, but a routine of sadistic abuse. My crime was myself, so the punishment never ended. He felt the need to make sure I was broken. "
Like Galia, her mother, who was also abused by her father, did not come to her aid.
On the contrary, she stood by the head of the family.
Under various pretexts, she tried to keep the "outcast and hated" away from her parents' home - the girl grew up in Kibbutz Hulda southeast of Tel Aviv, where, as was common in the kibbutzim at the time, the children were housed separately from their parents and they were housed daily only visited briefly.
But at home they didn't want to give them up completely, writes the children's book author: "Tyranny needs sacrifices, and like all abused children, I kept coming back in search of closeness in the hope that something would change."
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Galia Oz (right) with her brother Daniel
Photo: Ulises Ruiz Basurto / picture alliance / dpa
But hope was dashed.
Because the violence in the parental home was systematic.
Galia Oz consciously speaks here of »terror«: »The threat of violence was always in the air.
And that was enough to spread horror and gain control. "There was consequent silence about domestic violence, an expression of the father's" drive to cruelty ".
Intimidation and dissimulation went hand in hand, as Galia Oz writes:
“And then there was this something that disguised itself as love, which was presented to the outside world and in the family as an undisputed fact, erased all doubts and nipped every rebellious thought in the bud. To this day I can hardly believe how effective and hermetic this constellation was. I was a kid, but there was no
childhood
.
It took decades before I understood that even when I was an adult, violence did not go away, it simply took on a different form;
that this pattern of intimidation and denial did not change until my father died. "
Galia Oz had already drawn the consequences for herself seven years ago and cut off contact with the family.
In Israel, the family rift has long been puzzled.
The case doesn't get any clearer now either - Galia Oz's serious accusations were immediately rejected by her mother Nili, older sister Fania Oz-Salzberger and younger brother Daniel.
"We knew another father, a warm, warm, attentive father who was caring, loyal and devoted, and who loved his family deeply," the sister immediately posted on Twitter.
Even if the mother and siblings reject Galia's allegations, they take note of her "deep and apparently genuine heartbreaking pain."
With her startling confessions, Galia Oz obviously does not want to take revenge.
Rather, she uses her personal experiences as an opportunity to focus on the subject of child abuse and to make the mechanisms of its denial and its consequences visible.
Applause from the right
In Israel, however, their revelations are also politically explosive.
Because they come in extremely handy for the right, especially during election campaign times.
As is well known, Amos Oz was the figurehead of the left and of the peace camp, which is increasingly being marginalized by the continual shift to the right in the country.
Now the adversaries see themselves put in a position to revile the world-renowned peace fighter as a violent criminal.
In malicious comments on social media, the case is often used as an opportunity to accuse the left of mendacity: like Amos Oz, it speaks of peace, but is in reality violent.
However, Galia Oz does not only receive applause from the right.
Many left-wing liberals in the country thank the children's book author for her courage and her commitment to the rights of children, although voices have been raised among them that attribute the author to selfish motives.
Galia Oz has always succeeded in initiating a public debate on the sensitive issue of child abuse.
The affair that the Israeli media are now rushing into will sooner or later also occupy literary scholars.
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