Appelfeld interview

You'll need to be patient because it can take some time to load, but this interview with the writer Aharon Appelfeld, Holocaust survivor and author of the masterpiece Badenheim 1939, among many other books, is well worth reading:

"Look, there was an aggressive element in Zionism. It fought against Yiddish and it fought against the Diaspora and it fought against Jewish riches. I understand that this was necessary. For a time, it was necessary. But in the final analysis, we are paying a terrible price for it. We are paying for it in the form of the diminishment of the Jewish soul. I am not an ideologue. I am not a polemicist. I am trying to apprehend the full complexity of the Jewish story. I am trying to understand the modern Jewish soul in all its transformations. I feel close to Yiddishkeit and to Zionism as well; to the communists and to the assimilators, too. Because I saw them there. I saw them all being killed in the same pit. Therefore I feel sympathy for them..."
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"Abroad we are described as a militaristic society, lusting for land, bloodthirsty. A kind of Sparta where everyone is a soldier, everyone is a mad patriot, going down to the tank next to his house and rushing off to Nablus. But that's not what I see around me. I don't see Sparta. I see a refugee camp…"
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"…To say of the Jews that they are a little like the Nazis. Not exactly Nazis, just a bit. When I see that, I say that there is something very deep in European civilization: the need to demonize us runs very deep. Because to this day, Europe has not given itself a full reckoning of what happened between 1939 and 1945. Because it is not only the Nazis, you know, it's not only Germany. Women and children were taken from France openly. There was collaboration all across the continent. And it didn't happen in Zimbabwe or in Nicaragua; it happened in the very heart of Europe. Therefore, because to this day they haven't made a confession, the Europeans feel the need to say of the Jews that they are no better than them. On the contrary - they are worse."
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"Fears exist. There is no one here who doesn't have fear. Even those who behave confidently have fear. I will try to articulate it quietly: there are approximately 200 million Arabs who don't like you. Don't like you very much. And about a billion Muslims who also don't like you very much. And Europe doesn't actually like you. You are a small minority. Five or six million is a very small minority. I will say no more."

(Hat tip: Gur Hirshberg.)