Interview with Orly Noy

Where are you from and how did you get involved in the peace work you are doing now?

I grew up in Iran. We left Iran in the 1979 revolution.1 Because of all the commotion of the revolution, all of my memories from my early childhood are kind of mixed. But I remember having a very good life there. I remember my school and the places we used to go for vacation. When the revolution started it was kind of obvious that it was going to be really, really different, and that we had to find someplace else. Not because there was any kind of anti-Semitic message from the authorities, not at all. To this day they are very anti-Israel, but they are not very anti-Semitic at all.2 We just felt that being a religious Muslim country it wasn’t going to be the same.

How old were you when you left Iran, and where did you go?

I was nine. My brother and I spent a year in a boarding school near Tel Aviv3 because my parents came a few months later. They wanted to sell the house and make their arrangements here. We spent one year in a boarding school which was very difficult because we didn’t speak the language, and then suddenly being left without our parents in a new country, a new language, new kids, new everything… In a way I guess, looking back it was very educational for me, because I really learned how to take care of myself and stand up for myself. It was the school of life, but I couldn’t appreciate it back then. I was very miserable. Eventually it worked out. My parents came to Jerusalem4 and we moved to Jerusalem and I’ve lived here ever since. I actually studied in a religious girls’ school called Pelech.5

Tell me about it.

The average of the graduating marks is one of the highest in the country. It’s a very good school, and it’s a democratic school.

What do you mean you went to a democratic school?

All the decisions are made exclusively by the students themselves. It’s very interesting. It’s a private school. The headmaster6 when I was in school was the head of the Israeli Feminist Association, and she’s a very peculiar mix of being Orthodox religious and very feminist, very left wing. So that was my education. It was actually right near here [where we are conducting the interview]. So that’s where I went to school. This was one of the places that really taught me to think critically, and to criticize everything. I really liked my school.

How did your parents decide to send you to a religious girls' school?

It started from elementary school when we came. Here is one of the really screwed up things about Israel: they kind of automatically direct people that come from eastern countries, mostly Arab countries or Muslim countries, to the religious schooling system,7 which is very patronizing of them, because we weren’t religious at all at home. We kept Yom Kippur,8 basically that was it. But here it was, “Oh, you are from a Muslim country, go to the [religious schools].” So that started in elementary school, and then Pelech, the graduating [secondary] school, I had already picked for myself because I knew that was where I wanted to study. Then I went to the army,9 of course to the Intelligence, because I speak Farsi.10 I was there for 2 1/2 years. I was supposed to leave the army when the First Gulf War started,11 and they asked me to stay for longer. So I ended up staying for six more months.

Did you do reserve duty after you were in the army?

Yes, for a very short period of time. Basically girls do reserve duty until they are 24 or until they get married. But it was just that one time that they really needed me to stay. I went gladly, again, this is another place that for most people is a misery, and I really enjoyed my time there, because I did something very interesting.

Can you tell me what your military service consisted of?

Not really. But there was no hierarchy of officers and commanders or anything like that. We all worked together as a group.

You did something totally unrelated before you began working at the radio station, so what were you doing before and how did you come to work at All For Peace Radio?12

It’s actually very much connected in my opinion. I worked with many disadvantaged sectors in society, with blind people, with young girls in distress who were kicked out of their houses. For a long time I worked with mentally challenged people and old people. To me, in the bigger sense of the word politics, it’s all connected, because it’s the way that we as society want to treat our weaker parts, and it’s how we as a society are weakening these groups. Be it the old people or the Palestinians, it’s our doing, so it’s our responsibility to take care of these people later. I always thought that was my field and that was what I was going to do for the rest of my career years, but then this opportunity came about and I was really excited about it.

I’ve known Shimon13 since I was doing my BA.14 We studied together and we were actually roommates for a year. He offered me this job once or twice and I hesitated. I had just come back from a year in America, and it was just after my second child and I was looking for something familiar, going back to work with mentally challenged people or something like that. And then Shimon tried once more, and I said, “Well, this is something important.” So I gave it a try and I really like it.

What were some of your hesitations when you were first thinking about working at All For Peace radio?

Mostly professional hesitations, because I thought it would be really amateurish of me to try to work in this field of communications and media without any previous experience. I hadn't done anything that had to do with communications, and I didn’t want to get the job, you know, just because he knows me. So I was really hesitating not for a minute because of the idea itself-- the idea was very noble to me from the beginning. But I thought I might not be the right person to do this. I thought they should have somebody with much more experience than I have.

What did you like about the idea of All For Peace radio?

Well, to begin with, anything that combines Israelis and Palestinians I think is blessed. Anything-- if it’s art, movies, or science. Anything that brings the two societies together. But because this particular coming together also has a voice, which is the voice of radio, I thought it was such a great idea. Because there used to be a Voice of Peace radio station,15 which was an excellent radio station, but they escaped into a third language, into English, and I thought, this is exactly how it should be done, Hebrew and Arabic, and not broadcasting from a remote boat on the sea, but from Ramallah,16 and sitting in Jerusalem! And I thought that was a great idea. And the voice, people can hear us! I thought it was the best way to do it.

Can you talk about what your typical day is like, all your tasks associated with this job?

Well since I am single handedly the Israeli desk right now… basically I have to come up with the ideas for the items that I want to do, and then think about who would be the right person to talk with about the specific issue, and then try to locate him. And then try to have him accept to do an interview and record the actual interview.

Can you explain how it works, what the radio station is, how the languages are used?

I think it’s the first attempt in Israel to do a bi-lingual radio station,17 so we had to really invent everything from scratch. For example, do we do one program using both languages, do we translate as we go along, do we do completely different programs, which is what we did eventually. There were so many decisions to be made, even technically-- the music we’re going to play, things like that. So what we do right now is two completely different programs in Arabic and in Hebrew. The idea is to approach different subjects, not only regarding Palestinian and Israeli issues. For me issues within Israeli society are very important. I have at least one item every show about injustices within Israeli society. It’s just as important I think. But the first item we do is something more alive, something more current from the news of the morning. And then, and I like this part very much, we translate the other side’s newspapers in the morning, the headlines at least. I do a translation of Al Quds and Al Ayaam18 into Hebrew, and Adele19 translates Yediot and Ha’aretz20 in Arabic. And that brings a sense of what is going on on the other side at least.

How did the decision to do two separate shows in Arabic and Hebrew come about?

It was really just a question of waiting, like everything else. We thought that we were going to end up alienating both sides if they had to hear both languages at once. If I don’t understand Arabic, it will just be annoying to me to hear the sound of a language that I don’t understand, and that I also resent somehow. So we thought, let the people just hear one hour in Hebrew, a language they know and understand, and through that, familiarize them with the subjects we want to discuss. But if we mix the two languages together we would end up losing both sides. That was the rationale.

Do you have input into what is broadcast in Arabic?

No. The only input I do have is that we help each other a lot to find people. The language barrier is a huge one. If Adele wants to explain something to the Palestinians about the Israeli society, she has to find Israelis who speak Arabic, and this is where we help each other a lot. They try to help me find Arabs who speak Hebrew, and I do the same for them. Sometimes we make suggestions to each other, but I don’t have a say in her program, or vice versa.

Do you wish you had input into each other's programs?

I don’t want to have a say. I do want to be more involved. Even in the sense of just knowing what is going on in her program, I usually don’t. My Arabic is not that good, and I don’t have the time to sit for an hour every day and really listen to her program. So mostly I don’t even know what’s on her show, which is a shame, I think. I’ve suggested repeatedly, many, many times, to have a morning meeting. I think this is the least that a radio station should do. Somehow we never get to it, because it's so hectic in the morning. You have to find the person you’re going to interview first thing in the morning, and you have a deadline. So somehow the idea of a morning meeting just evaporated. I miss it terribly.

What language does the staff speak together?

Hebrew.

How come?

Their Hebrew is better than our Arabic. That’s the only reason. I try, but the thing is that I studied Fus-ha21 for so many years that my spoken Arabic is not so hot. So for them it’s easier, I think, to express themselves. Firas,22 for example, I think he’s making a point to speak in Arabic and I appreciate it very much. Also because it improves my Arabic, but I think that is the way to do it. Actually, at the beginning I now remember that we said that everybody would speak in his own language, but somehow it has worked out more easily for everybody to speak in Hebrew.

How do you feel about the staff defaulting to Hebrew?

I think obviously it’s another sign of occupying power. Hebrew is an occupying power over the Palestinians. It’s funny how it’s almost taken for granted by us that they would speak Hebrew and we wouldn’t speak Arabic. Even between the languages the Hebrew occupies the Arabic, even at our radio station. I wish I could speak… I’m sure that, you know what, it’s not even a good excuse, because if I had spoken Arabic with them it would have improved, obviously, but somehow you know it just turned out this way that we all speak Hebrew.

When you came to the radio station had you ever had any experience working with Palestinians?

Not with Palestinians, but with Arab Israelis. I was the director of this house for mentally challenged people and some of my employees were Arabs, but you know there is an employee/employer thing there, we didn’t work together as equals.

When you first heard about the radio station, did you have any concerns about how the team atmosphere would be?

No, although I think I had a very different, I guess somehow a romantic image of what it would be like. Actually the worry started afterwards. We came from very different points of view even as to the project itself, and the worries came later. But from the beginning not at all. I think I was romanticizing it a bit.

Can you give me an example of some of the different expectations among the staff?

The first reality check was the “get to know you” session we had, which was way too soon for us. It was Shimon and Maysa’s idea that it would bring us closer together, and it’s a very demanding and exposing seminar, which I think is closer to the Israeli mentality than to the Arab one.

How was the “get to know you” staff session more geared for Israelis than for Palestinians?

I think all this discourse about exposing yourself to one another is something very Western which is more familiar in the Israeli society than the Palestinian one. Really the Palestinian members weren’t so cooperative at this seminar, and then I started to think, okay, I have to get to know them in another way, this is not going to work.

What kinds of things were you asked to do at the staff seminar?

All sorts of exercises. For example, what I thought was very trivial, which wasn’t trivial for them at all, to define yourself, to choose three definitions that define you the most. And I saw that it wasn’t so easy for them to say their own definitions as people in front of me, in front of a total stranger. “Am I Arab, am I Palestinian, am I Muslim, am I Christian…I don’t want to do it in front of you right now.” And for me, you know, I’ve done this exercise maybe five or ten times before so it was pretty trivial for me and I saw that it wasn’t so trivial for them and they didn’t want to do it. There were a few more exercises like that where the basic idea was wrong for this point in time.

What are some of the different ways that you have gotten to know each other as a staff?

Through coffee breaks, you know, learning their way of working, Adele and Firas both come with a lot of radio experience, so I can learn a lot from their experience, and through learning from them I get to know them. So first through the professional side, and later through the personal side. I thought it would be the other way around.

You mentioned staff members had very different ideas about the project itself. Can you say more?

They looked at it almost completely, or 80% professionally, and maybe 20% as a co-existence project. I mean, obviously they came to this station because they liked the idea of co-existence, but for them the first task was to do the best professional job that they could do, and I didn’t look at it that way in the beginning. And I think they were right, because you know, we had to learn how to be professional very quickly. There were different views of the project.

How did some of the differences in approach to the work play out in some of the decisions that were made about the way the radio station would work?

It was very frustrating for us not to know when or if we were going to go on air. Adele and Firas pushed very hard not to act as if we were live, as if we were on air, and to save it for the time when we would actually be on air. I thought, let’s do it, we’re here, there is no point in wasting time by doing nothing. I wanted us to gain some experience, which I needed much more than they did, because they had the experience. For them it was just a waste of time, and I could understand that, because they had already done the real thing [live radio].

What are some of the biggest challenges right now in your work at the radio station?

The biggest challenge right now is not up to us, it’s to put the radio on air! I think for me the biggest challenge is to somehow synchronize the two programs so they won’t be so separate from one another. I think they have to be connected, in essence, much more than they are. I think we cannot go on broadcasting… Right now, in a way, it’s like you took an Israeli radio station and an Arabic radio station and they are just sharing time on the same internet or the same signal. But I think it shouldn’t be that way, I think we have to work much more closely, share the contents or what we are going to do with each other, and maybe build a line-up of issues that we’re going to deal with in both programs. I think it’s really important to give this a feeling of one instead of two different things.

You said the decision to do two separate shows was based on not wanting to alienate the audiences by having a show in both Hebrew and Arabic. Are you worried about alienating the audiences?

I’m not even talking about broadcasting the same program in Hebrew and Arabic, but I think the content of the Hebrew and the Arabic program should somehow be connected. If I do an item about education I think there should be something about education, or if Adele does something about unemployment, I think I should do something about unemployment. Something to connect the two programs.

Do you anticipate that there would be problems connecting the content of the Arabic and Hebrew programs?

The problem is really technical, because if she goes through the newspapers and finds something that’s interesting for her, the chances that I can find somebody who speaks Hebrew and can talk about the same subject are very slim. More than anything, it’s a problem of language. It’s really difficult, because there are so many interesting things that I would like to discuss, and there aren’t enough people on each side who speak the other language.

It sounds like the essence of what you’re trying to do... You’re sort of trying to create a language.

Exactly. So we try to do some interviews in English, but it’s very awkward, and by the time I finish translating into Hebrew what he said, then I already forgot what I was going to ask him, and it’s kind of awkward and difficult, so I try not to do it.

It’s hard on the radio, you can’t have subtitles.

Yes. So, if it’s important enough for me, like with Joline,23 then I do it.

You said some of the stories you do are more related to current events. Can you give me an example of some of the stories you’ve done?

Every day we try to approach the hottest subject of the day, so for weeks unfortunately it was the Gaza thing.24 So I had two or three Palestinian journalists from Gaza to just describe what was going on there. I thought this was very important because all the information that we hear of what is going on there is from Israeli journalists, who are very far from being objective. Sometimes we have tried to do the morning interviews with Knesset members, but I hated it, I absolutely hated it, because I thought, “We shouldn’t give them more radio time to repeat the nonsense that they are repeating every place else. We shouldn’t give them another stage to do this.” So I really try to avoid it, from both sides of the political map, from the left and the right, they are not saying anything new. There is nothing interesting about what they have to say.

If you’re not working together on the programs themselves, what is the nature of the joint work that is going on between Israelis and Palestinians at the radio station?

Sharing the same space I guess! It’s sad for me to say, but right now it’s really not much more than that. And I get a lot of help, especially from Firas, he’s very well connected with Palestinian sources, so within a phone call he can get me any name and phone number that I want. It’s a great help, but it’s technical help.

It’s access also.

Yes, and he’s well known, so if I mention his name it makes it much more easy for me.

For someone who doesn’t know much about this place and about the other media outlets that are available, how do you explain why what you are doing is important?

Well, there is a myth about the Israeli media being left wing, and it’s like the silliest thing. You hear this accusation all the time, that the Israeli media is left wing. I know that this is how they would want to see themselves, but it’s very far… because the left in Israeli is a kind of an elite, and the media would like to see itself as part of that elite, but it has nothing to do with basic ideas of socialism, or democracy, or truth or justice. It has to do with a social stance, they just like to look at themselves as elite. But the Israeli media really so easily just bring to the people what the army wants them to tell the people, they hardly ever investigate anything. Even the picture that you see if somebody is reporting from Gaza, he is not really inside, he’s just standing at the checkpoint and he calls it reporting from Gaza and tells us what the army spokesperson tells him to say. So I think it’s really, really important… and ideally, I would even leave the conflict all together. The conflict is one aspect of the Israeli and Palestinian society, but the Palestinian society, like the Israeli one, is a whole entity, and there is so much more going on there that we don’t know about. I was amazed by the amount of art projects going on just in Ramallah since I started working here. If the Israelis knew that these people are trying to live their lives as normally as they can under the circumstances, that these are people who are interested in art and in movies, and they have scientists, maybe we would learn to look at them differently. We know so much more about what is going on in America than in any given place on earth, and we don’t know anything about those who really live next door. So for me that is really the number one task of what we are trying to do.

Was there something that surprised you since you started doing this work?

Well, Joline was definitely a surprise—a Palestinian woman pilot! We had to fight the Israeli mentality to achieve this ourselves. Well, it was in the military, but still, it wasn’t such a given for us. Of course, this is a patronizing way of looking at it, because why wouldn’t they have a woman pilot, but it was surprising for me. I was surprised by the humor, I’m not talking about anything specifically, I was surprised by how much humor they can have in these horrible circumstances. Both the staff and other Palestinians I have interviewed. I spoke with a businessman who just opened a huge mall in Ramallah, the first mall in Ramallah.25 I asked him, “Is this a wise business decision, to open a mall in Ramallah right now?” And he was so funny about it, he had so much humor. I really learned to appreciate it, because you know, no matter where I come from, I will always be an Israeli to them, and he could have a sense of humor with me. It was nice for me to see. There are of course, many Palestinians who refuse to speak with us.

What do people say if they refuse an interview with you?

They don’t say it specifically, out loud, but it’s obvious, some don’t want to have anything to do with Israelis whatsoever. Nothing at all. Of course I can understand that as well, but we miss out on some very interesting projects this way.

What are some of programs you are not able to report on because they do not want to be involved?

Like Yabous Productions26…they produce music mostly, but not just music, and they have so many artists. If I want to play the music of a new Palestinian singer who just put out a new single, and play it on the radio, they won’t. If they hear about anything where Israelis are involved, they just shut down.

Are there Israelis who refuse to be involved also?

I had the funniest experience. A couple of weeks ago Adele asked me if I knew an Israeli settler27 who speaks Arabic. She really, genuinely wanted to listen to what the other side had to say, which I thought was really commendable, it was really nice of her, because I wouldn’t speak with these people on my program, for sure. But she was willing to fairly listen to the other side. So I said, “I’ll do it by the book. I’ll call the Yesha28 spokesman, and I’ll ask him.” This is the craziest person I’ve spoken with for a very long time. I introduced myself very politely and I said, “I was wondering if maybe you could connect us to somebody from your organization that speaks Arabic and can speak with us.” He says, “Are you from a terrorist radio?!” That’s what he said. I was shocked, I couldn’t speak, and I said, “Do I sound like a terrorist to you?” And he said, “Well, the fact that there are Israelis that cooperate with these terrorists, it’s none of my business.” And I said, “Okay, get out of my ear.” It was so immature.

So did she end up finding somebody?

No. There are Knesset29 members who won’t speak with us, of course. I think once we are on air everybody will speak with us. The politicians I mean, because they just want a stage to perform.

Did your involvement come as a surprise to you?

Very much. I never thought I would end up in this, behind a microphone. I thought I would work as a social worker. Little did I know.

Are you enjoying it?

Very much.

How does your family feel about your work at the radio station?

Well, my husband of course supports it very much. We share the same views. My parents and my brother have very different political views than I do. Which is another problem of the Israeli society: it turned out for many reasons that the Jews from Arab or Muslim countries lean much more to the right side of the political map, so that’s their political view. And they don’t really have a problem with me working with Palestinians, I mean they are not as supportive as my husband, for example, it’s far from being a problem from them, but they are in no way supportive of this.

You mentioned the stereotype that Jews from Eastern countries are more right wing. How does it feel to be an exception to this?

I think it has a lot to do with my character as a person. That’s what I was telling you about, that I really learned from a very early age to do things my own way. It’s sad for me because I think that it’s not just by coincidence that it turned out this way, that Eastern Jews turn out to be more right wing than the others. It’s because the system somehow gave them the idea that you’re suspicious—being Arab yourself—and if you want to belong to the Israeli collective, you have to really reject the Arabs, put a very long wall between you and them, because you look like them and you speak their language, and if you start to like them a little bit, then maybe you start to belong to them much more than you belong to us, so they try to be much more Israeli than the Israelis, whatever the word Israeli means. Very systematically the Israeli system drove them to this side of the political map. Very consciously, I think, it was something… I don’t blame them. I think it was a logical decision to make: if you want to live your life as an Israeli, you better do what they expect you to do and be what they expect you to be. I think the problem begins with the system.

How do you cope with those expectations of how to fit in to Israeli society?

It’s a different generation, and it’s a different environment. I always wondered if I could have right wing friends, and I know I couldn’t. It’s not just a political thing, it’s how you are as a person. So the environment that I choose for myself—my husband, my friends, my work, my academic life—it’s an accepting one. It’s one that encourages criticizing, and I’m a very critical person. I don’t feel [those pressures]. I feel it in different areas because my husband is from Europe, so I feel like a stranger a lot of times among his family or his parents’ friends, and sometimes they look at me as if to say, “you don’t really belong here.” It happens, it happens a lot. But it has nothing to do with the Palestinian issue.

Has working at the radio station changed anything about your life besides your work routine?

Nothing that I can point at besides my turning into a much more sensitive person. I listen to things differently, I listen to news differently, I read newspapers differently. And I think I just became much more sensitive than I was before to the other side’s suffering, pain.

Has the conflict affected your life personally?

No. I know people who lost members of their families in a terrorist bomb. Well, you know, it’s Jerusalem—you’re afraid to go on a bus, afraid to sit in a café but it’s like every other person, nothing more than that.

What’s it like to raise kids here?

Sure, I have fears, of course. We had this argument… We spent a year, two years ago, in America. We spent one year there, and Haim [my husband] really didn’t want to come back. He said it’s crazy to raise kids in a place like this. And I always knew that I couldn’t live in a place that I didn’t care enough about. I can be very angry about my country, I can hate it— but I have to care. So it wasn’t a question for me, really. And next year Noa is going to the Jewish-Arab school,30 and this is my way to cope with it. So, yes, there is a problem, and we’re not ignoring it, but you learn to deal with it properly. You learn to deal with it by knowing the other side, by listening to them and by telling them what you think about things. But you won’t get the information from the other kid in the kindergarten, or from the teacher, whoever.

Kids are growing up here… we always talk about the education in the Palestinian side, that they educate to hate, and we don’t realize how much we do the same here. How much we teach the kids just the idea that we are so small and we are so weak and the whole world is against us, it’s such a crazy way to bring up kids! Psychologically it’s so screwed up. Teach them to be a part of this world, don’t teach them to be separate, you know… I don’t want to be more special than anyone else. I want to be exactly like the rest of the world. So for me that’s the way to cope with it—not by escaping.

Is your daughter is going to attend the bilingual school?

Yes, it starts from kindergarten. It’s so lovely. You walk into this school and you cannot tell which is an Arab and which is a Jew, just by the Arabic they all speak, or the Hebrew they all speak. They speak it with a perfect pronunciation, with a perfect dialect. It’s great.

Have you spent much time in the West Bank?31

But not for this job?

I would love to have the opportunity to go there. I’m not afraid, by the way, at all. And it’s not naïve of me. I know that Israelis who go there, if it’s not for hostile purposes, they are accepted with warm hospitality. If I have the opportunity I will go gladly. I really want to see Ramallah again. I love this city, it’s a beautiful city.

Do you think you will have the opportunity to go to the West Bank with your co-workers?

I think that Adele’s house is between the Beit Jala33 and Bethlehem checkpoint,34 so it’s possible. But I think if I went with her I would just feel so ashamed, so embarrassed at the checkpoint. If they mistreated her in front of me I don’t think I would ever be able to look her in the eye again, really, for me it’s… in the morning when I sit with Shireen35 to do the translation of the headlines, which I love, and I sit with her and I see the pictures of soldiers with an old Palestinian woman, or with a child, pointing a gun at a child, and beyond the job that we are both doing at the same moment, I really feel ashamed as an Israeli. This soldier could be my brother, he could be my neighbor, he could even be my son at a certain point! It’s my side, and it’s really shameful for me. So I am afraid of the experience of having to go through this with one of my friends.

In doing this kind of work, what’s the most important thing for you to achieve?

Personally? Well, personally for me it’s to improve my Arabic. Really it’s a big thing for me. But just doing the job well, improving professionally, not sounding so hesitant in my interviews. It’s funny because I’m not a hesitant person. Somehow the microphone does something to me. So I just want to do the job in the way I think it should be done.

What do you want to achieve for the future, for the place?

I would really want this radio station to turn into the touchstone of the left. I think one of the mistakes that Shimon and Maysa are making is that they are trying to aim for the center, and I think we really do not belong to the center at all. I think we should be at the very left end of the scale.

How come you think the radio station should aim for the left instead of the center?

Because I think this illusion of “center” is very damaging. I think this is the time to choose sides. I think we cannot afford not to be very clear about the side we are choosing, and I think the side we choose should be the very left, and I think we say it out loud and very clearly that that is who we are. And more than that, if you call yourself left, you have to justify yourself in front of us. The right wing has Channel Seven,36 and it was a huge success, because they were very obvious and very clear about the messages they wanted to bring, and I think we should do exactly the same on the left side. We shouldn’t apologize to anybody about being left-wing. And I don’t care about being one-sided, I think there is one side to this right now, and I think everybody has to choose sides, and I don’t want to balance anything… you know, Shimon has this idea that if I interview somebody whose house was demolished, that I have to somehow balance it with another voice. I don’t want to do that, I do not want to do that. I think we do not understand the meaning of a family being left without a house, and there’s no way to balance it with anything, it’s ridiculous. So this is my vision of this station. To be very clear about what we are saying here: not to apologize, not to hesitate, and to say it loud and clear. That’s how I see it, they don’t agree with me.

What do you think is damaging about aiming for the political center?

Because I think it makes your message very vague, and I think being vague was the tool that all the dictatorships have used. It serves the government, it serves the system. So this vagueness now allows Sharon37 to present himself as a white dove, you know, he wants to leave Gaza,38 so you’re not sure what it means, what will become of the West Bank… Be clear about what you want to do and say it, and let people choose. This vagueness allows people to look at themselves as very liberal, very enlightened, and then to go and elect somebody like Tomi Lapid,39 who to me is a fascist.40 So it’s very, very bad. People should have the courage to say what they believe and to think clearly to achieve some conclusions and to speak to these conclusions. Not to try to eat your cake and have it. You can’t do that anymore. We’ve done it for too long. We’ve tried to be a democracy and be an occupying force, we tried to be Jewish and to be democratic, it doesn’t work. These questions should be sorted out.

Have you had conversations with the staff about who your intended audience is ?

Yes.

How do other people react to this question?

Well, I should be fair and mention that they [the directors] have pressures on them from other sources that I don’t have. It’s not so easy for them I guess. But I don’t like this “we want to have a lot of listeners so let’s not alienate anybody who doesn’t feel exactly like us, so we’ll try to be a little more center.”

What kinds of ideas, in your opinion, would a really left wing radio station represent, then?

There are two Israeli journalists from Ha’aretz, Amira Haas and Giddon Levy,41 who are considered to be practically the enemy. And they do the only thing that a decent journalist should do, which is go to the other side… I mean, we’ve been fighting with Palestinians for God knows how many years, can we go and look at their faces, can we accept the fact that they have faces, they have names, they have ages. When a Palestinian is killed, nobody knows his age, nobody knows his name. Nobody even knows how many Palestinians were killed exactly. They say 8, we say 5, somebody else says 10. When Israelis die you know exactly how many. This is a symptom of how much life matters, you know, because the Israeli life matters more so we count them exactly. Each life matters to us. And so I would do just that. You know, you want to shut your eyes and your ears, but I won’t let you. Listen, these are the people that you are fighting with. And of course they have terrorism, of course there’s corruption, there’s terrorism, but can we look at the reasons? So, just that, besides dealing with the inner Israeli issues as well. Exactly the same principal applies there as well. If I sit in front of an unemployed forty year old person with 4 kids to feed, I don’t really care about anything that Netanyahu42 has to say about the Israeli economy. And he can scream that the economy is improving, but if this guy has nothing to eat because of your economic plan, it’s a stupid plan. If it makes so many more people poorer, it’s not worth a dime. That’s what I mean by not balancing. A poor person, a poor child cannot be balanced with anything.

And what would you want to say to audiences in the Arab world?

That we can work it out, really. With the Palestinians, Israel is really bringing it too much to the point of no return, I’m afraid, but I think it’s not too late. Certainly not with the Arab world. I really think there is a full chance of having normal relations with the Arab world. That would be my message: that it can be done, it really can be done.

What does the word peace mean to you?

Honor. And justice. It’s not so much about love. For a lot of people I think it is about love, but for me it’s more about justice and fairness and honor. You can love somebody but if you mistreat him… I don’t mind people not liking the Palestinians, but I mind people not treating them with justice. It’s just human fairness; it’s not fair for them to live like this. It’s not fair. Peace for me is the realization that every person is born with equal rights. Peace means that no child should die in Rwanda because he has nothing to eat just because he is unfortunate enough to be born there. It’s crazy. It’s about justice and fairness more than anything else.

So what has to be done differently and who has to do it in terms of peace making?

This is the saddest part, really, because I don’t see anybody in the left wing who can lead such a big move. I appreciate Beilin43 very much personally, but I think he lacks the charisma and the sense of leadership and I think he won’t be able to really get the people behind him. We thought at a certain point that Mitzna44 would be able to do it, but then he turned out to be much weaker than the opposition required, so I don’t see anybody right now. It’s really sad to say it.

What do you think has to happen on a non-political level?

A lot of resistance and protest. They try to show the young people who refuse to serve in the military or refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories45 as traitors and I think the civilian protest should be such that it would recognize them as pacifists,46 as what they are. Pacifists are admired around the world and only here they are looked at as traitors. You know it’s the same kind of protest that brought us out of Lebanon,47 the Four Mothers Movement,48 it’s just women that say “Enough is enough, we are there for no reason at all, we can do the same job from our borders, there is no point in soldiers being killed every day in Lebanon for so many years.” And then in one day it just vanished, we just came out, and that was it. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy with Gaza, but I think the first settlement should be removed. Once the first settlement is removed and people see that it can be done, then it’s going to be much easier. But I think that the civil society must really fight much harder for this. It’s our lives.

What you think was missing in previous peace processes?

There are really three… are you talking about just with the Palestinians?

Yes.

There are only three significant processes: Madrid49 that Shamir50 started, and then Oslo,51 and then Camp David,52 Barak.53 We were obviously forced into every one of them. There’s a certain level of terrorism that we can accept and then if we pass this level we cannot bear it anymore and we go into the peace negotiation. And it’s so stupid because each time we have to wait until enough Israelis were killed before we’ll start to talk. I can really remember Oslo very clearly. With Madrid I was too young, I don’t remember that much.

What gives you hope?

Well, Egypt was our biggest enemy, and it still is the strongest Arab country, with the strongest army. We had the worst wars with Egypt, and we made peace. It was just a matter of land.54 With some of the Arab countries we don’t even have a land issue. We don’t have a land issue with Iraq, or with Libya. So if we work it out with our neighbors, there is no reason we should have animosity with the rest of our Arab neighbors.

If you could talk to an international audience, who would you want to talk to and what would you want to say about what is going on here?

For me the Arab audience is the most important international one. Much more important than either the European or the American one. Because we are placed in the middle of the Middle East, and if we want to stay in this country, we are going to have to learn to communicate with the Arab world, and they should be much more important to us than the Europeans or the Americans. They are whom we are going to have to deal with eventually, like it or not. This is from the political point of view. From the cultural point of view I think we should be much more connected to the Arab world as well, because I think we are trying so stupidly to imitate the West in everything we do, and I think it’s very inauthentic to a huge part of the population here. My father listens to Farsi music, and of course he likes it more than any European music, and I know that many people like European music and it’s fine, but I think that there should be a place for Arab culture for the sake of the Arab Jews!55 That’s their heritage, that’s what was taken from them when they came here. So from every aspect, I think communicating with the Arab world should be our number one priority.

But with the Oslo process I remember there was really a sense of hope. And I felt that Rabin56 was really determined. Something clicked in his mind and he came to realize from within that it cannot go on like this. After the assassination everything just collapsed. For me personally, not on a national level, but on the personal level, the assassination of Rabin was one of the biggest traumas of my life, because in a single moment it killed every trace of hope that we had.

After Netanyahu was elected, we thought that was it. Barak was much too arrogant and did more damage to the Israeli peace camp than anybody before him. It was really inexcusable what he did, because he gave the Israelis the sense… he said out loud, “We offered them everything and they refused, and they chose terrorism.”57 What more could the Right wing ask for? He created the slogans for them. Nobody talks about it! I’m not taking responsibility off the Palestinians. They made huge mistakes. They really, to say the least, Arafat58 didn’t really want to achieve peace. I think there were a lot of other Palestinians that wanted to achieve peace, but Arafat wasn’t one of them. Having said that, Barak was the Israeli Prime Minister that built the biggest number of new settlements in the West Bank.59 You cannot sit and negotiate and at the same time build new settlements—it’s impossible. This is something the Israeli public didn’t know about. They just knew that we offered everything and they didn’t take it. Once you put this notion into the Israeli mind, that they cannot be trusted because we really offered them everything and they didn’t accept, the peace camp couldn’t recover, and it didn’t recover after that. And what’s amazing is that he’s still saying it! They interview Barak and he’s still saying the same thing!

So I think other than Begin60 at his time and Rabin, no other Israeli leader really meant peace with the understanding of the price it means. It means that you will have to get the soldiers to physically remove people from their settlements. Nobody really wanted to deal with this. They haven’t evacuated a single settlement.61 Barak never did. So he wasn’t really trusted by the Palestinian side, and I can understand that. He has this military attitude that “this is the best offer that I can make, so take it or leave it.” Maybe the Palestinians could have acted more wisely, but certainly Barak bears a huge part of the blame.

What do you think will be happening here in five years?

I think it will get much worse. I think in five years we are going to have Netanyahu as a prime minister again. I don’t know which one is worse, Sharon or Netanyahu. I despise them both equally. I don’t trust Sharon’s plans for peace and I don’t think he’s honest about it, but I think Netanyahu is really dangerous. I’m sure he’s going to be the next prime minister, and I think it’s going to get much worse.

Do you think you will see peace here in your lifetime?

Of this I am absolutely sure. One way would be a mass international intervention. Another way would be that it would turn into a war, not like the war we are having now, but something in the sense of a catastrophe: really bad. And then maybe people would realize. People always think here that if we apply enough force we can crush them eventually. And I always think, how much force is enough force? We’ve been bombing the most populated place on earth62 from air, should we just bomb the whole place? What should we do? So I don’t know what the red line would be for Israelis, but I think there is one… I must believe there is one. It could be a cold peace like with Egypt, that’s fine, I’ll take it any day.

What do you think about the wall?63

Apart from its really not being efficient because it doesn’t stop anything—it’s efficient in Gaza because it’s backed by hundreds of soldiers—it can’t be of any help in Jerusalem. But again, it’s a question of justice. The way Israelis mistake power for morality is really frightening, because they think if we are stronger, we have the moral right to do whatever we want. It’s like the way they look at what America is doing in Iraq. The only thing is that they have the power to do it. That’s it, they have no more justification. So what we’re doing with the wall is immoral in the deepest sense of the word. There is a Hebrew saying, “When you kill somebody, you cannot inherit his belongings as well.” And this is what we are doing to the Palestinians. We are isolating them by taking their own lands to build this wall. If you see the pictures of Palestinian villages around Jerusalem: to cross their own village they to go all the way to Ma’aleh Adumim64 and then come back. Like in Ar Ram65 for example. It’s pure evil.

And you know what, even if it could really stop terrorist activities, it would still be evil to do this, because not all means are legitimate to use. If you have a terrorism problem, deal with it the way you should deal with it: by negotiations, by I don’t care how really. You cannot deal with your problems by really destroying the lives of others. You don’t have the right to do that. And I hate the way the only discussion in Israel about the wall is whether it works or if it doesn’t work. That’s not the question at all. I don’t care if it works. I don’t care if it stops 100% of terrorist activities, because for me it’s like going and bombing everybody from the air. That would stop the terrorist activities as well. We don’t do this.

You said you do have fears about going out in Jerusalem. How does this relate to what you’re talking about with the wall?

I think that the responsibility for my safety as an Israeli citizen is 100% on the government. It’s the government’s responsibility to make sure that people are safe. I don’t want them to torture the Palestinians66 for my sake. I think what they did led Palestinians to terrorist activities. I don’t justify terrorist activities at all, obviously, but you can understand something without justifying it. There is a reason for it—they weren’t born suicide bombers. Nobody wants to die. If they are desperate enough, if you bring them to be desperate enough, then they will, because they have no future. So I want the government to be responsible for my safely but to do it with the appropriate tools, to do it as a government should behave, not as state terrorism, which is much worse in my eyes than civilian terrorism. What Israel is doing is really state terrorism right now. And I don’t accept that it is either the wall or terrorism. You cannot make me choose between my life or their suffering. It’s not the equation, it doesn’t work that way, and they succeeded in making the Israelis think that way and it’s twisted. I don’t want the wall and I still want you to make sure that I’m safe. I think it’s fair enough to demand this from the government. I don’t want to hear about the wall being built for my sake. No thank you, it’s not for my sake.

Where do you see yourself in relation to the idea of moving forward toward a peaceful resolution to the conflict?

You mean with the station?

What’s your role in promoting peace?

I’m very modest about the role of the radio station, I don’t think it will make such a huge difference. But I think if we manage to have a regular audience, it will change things. Maybe a younger audience that can realize that they can choose a better future for themselves, maybe there we will make a difference. But I think it’s fair to say that the contribution is quite limited.