There are many Amos Oz's, but only one Netanyahu.

By Alex Solnik, for the Journalists for Democracy  - I'm crying for Amos Oz and I don't even know why. I didn't know him, I've never been with him, I haven't even interviewed him by phone. I've never been a fanatical reader of his books. At most, I read excerpts from "Black Box," which I gave to my father as a birthday present.

What made me cry was perhaps the fact that he died exactly on the day that Benjamin Netanyahu came to Brazil to finalize an alliance with the future president Jair Bolsonaro. I am crying for Amos Oz because I wish Brazilians would associate the State of Israel with the great writer and not with the petty Israeli statesman currently in power.

Oz was older than Israel. He was born in a Jerusalem where Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace. Perhaps that is why he always defended the existence of two states – Israel and Palestine – in contrast to Netanyahu's far-right, which does not tolerate peaceful coexistence with its neighbors and always encourages conflicts on the borders, and, given the military superiority of the Israelis, provides headlines in which Israel appears as a kind of genocidal state, often compared – unfairly – to Nazism.

I was in Israel in 1971. I was struck by the omnipresence of soldiers on the streets and roads, young and old, men and women. Morning, afternoon, and night. For me, living under a military dictatorship, it was a sign that a dictatorial regime was also in power there. But I also encountered a country of cheerful, vibrant, dynamic, tolerant people, willing to accept differences and those who are different.

Although Israel has right-wing, left-wing, and centrist people, as it does throughout the world, and Benjamin Netanyahu holds a mandate obtained through popular vote, in recent years the country has been stigmatized by sectors of the global and Brazilian left. Extremists like the musician Roger Waters created boycott campaigns. They incited artists not to perform in the country, as if it were an Evil Republic.

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I have never been, am not, and never will be a left-wing activist, but I have been a leftist since childhood. I have always associated the left with freedom, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. With live and let live. With respecting oneself and others. With cultivating ethical values. With uncompromisingly defending human rights. With fighting for the oppressed.

That's why I find it very strange and incomprehensible when people who call themselves left-wing treat Israel with the fury and intolerance of Waters. This means demonizing Israelis. Demonizing people. Which is unacceptable.

The left demonizes Israel just as the right demonizes Venezuela.

Netanyahu will pass, as all other statesmen have passed. What Oz wrote will remain forever.

In Israel there is only one Netanyahu, and – thankfully – many Amos Oz.

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