That spring evening, which was marked by the harsh sting of chopped red peppers, all over the housing estate, in all the flats around all the supper … - Dorit Rabinyan

Only literature can allow us to see each other as individuals.

The Holocaust effectively spewed the Jews out of Europe. Nothing even close to similar ever happened to the Jews in the Muslim world. Seen cynically, it seems strange that the Jews who were in effect exiled nevertheless continue to look to the European lifestyle with great veneration and try to recreate it in their own homeland. It makes you want to shout: 'Listen, people, you could have created something beautiful here, if you had only turned backs on those who killed six million of you, and instead accepted that the people who live in this region have never done anything like that.' I think that the majority of Jews who used to live with the Arabs were more peaceful, friendlier, more natural and humane than the European Jews. For example, the Sephardic rabbis in Morocco used to preach a pragmatic, sensible Judaism. Orthodoxy did not exist in those communities. Here in Israel, everything has become stricter and more extreme, like an echo of the Ashkenazi rabbis who had their religion influenced by a Catholic environment, where guilt and punishment were key concepts. (“What happened to the Sephardic culture here in Israel? Does it still exist at all?") DR: It was given no recognition. The European hegemony was so strong that it suppressed the very idea that there might be such a thing as Sephardic or Mizrahi culture. ("But has it continued to exist in one form or another?") DR: Behind closed doors, yes. In formal situations, no. But if we look back over the past ten years, there has been a dramatic change. Today, the notion that Israel is a pluralistic and multicultural place is more accepted. The very fact that my books and books by Sami Michael are being published is proof of that. Now you can listen to Middle Eastern music on the radio, watch TV dramas about families in Iraq or Iran, and it is all mainstream. It has received the Israeli stamp of kosher, as we say here. So now we are basically 100 percent Israeli. But that is something very recent.

The concept post-Zionism stems from the so-called new historians who in the early '90s came up with new facts, new stories, facts that the nation builders had omitted from textbooks in order to foster a generation that was proud and prepared to join the army and die, a generation fueled by patriotic loyalty. Facts such as the Palestinians being driven from their houses and having to flee in 1948. These new historians were deemed to be very radical, they sabotaged the prevailing views of Zionism and Israel. I personally am a radical and post-Zionist, in the sense that I take into account the fact that what we learned at school was not the absolute truth. At the same time, I live here in Israel, and in this sense I enjoy the fruits of the occupation in 1948. But I totally condemn the occupation in 1967. Israel is my only home. I know that it is built on a crime, and I am willing to pay for that crime, but I'm not willing to let Israel become a two-nation state. I want two states for two people, and I want to see the refugees from 1948 receive compensation for the crime that gave me my home, but I will never agree to creating a joint Jewish-Palestinian state between the River Jordan and the sea. I think that would be a catastrophe for the Jews. I want the Palestinian community to thrive, but not at the risk of becoming a refugee myself. And I say that with the greatest love for those who disagree with me, the sons and daughters of the refugees from 1948. They are welcome to come here and live in Jaffa, just as I sometimes go to live in New York, or my sister lives in London. They will have full rights here, but not citizenship. They will have their Palestine, their own homeland. In order to achieve peace, we have to establish two states alongside one another.