Avraham Yehoshua, death of a great writer and activist for peace between Israelis and Palestinians

The Israeli writer Avraham B. Yehoshua, here in 2012, during the Medici Foreign Prize for his book "Retrospective", died in Tel Aviv on June 14, 2022, at the age of 85.Bertrand GUAY / AFP AFP - BERTRAND GUAY

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

3 mins

 "Man of peace", "activist", "committed writer", key words evoked on the occasion of the disappearance of the Israeli writer Avraham Yehoshua.

The author, Israel Prize in 1995, winner of the Medici Foreign Prize in 2012 and figure of the Israeli anti-occupation left, died Tuesday, June 14, at the age of 85.

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“ 

 , "said Avraham Yehoshua in 2016 at the microphone of RFI.

All his life, the Israeli writer was convinced of the influence of literature on us.

As much rooted in literature as he is committed to peace, Avraham Yehoshua has always defended human rights and opposed the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel.

For this, Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke today in his tribute of a writer who “ 

 ”.

This lofty writer has written around twenty novels and plays translated from Hebrew into around thirty languages.

Beyond Israeli culture, his profoundly humanist work explored all the cultures and all the souls of the Middle East.

"

Retrospective"

Born on December 19, 1936 in Jerusalem into a family of Sephardic intellectuals, Avraham Yehoshua is the son of parents of Greek and Moroccan origin.

After having first chosen teaching, he decided at the end of his military service to become a writer.

It was during a stay in Paris that he published his first short stories in 1963. An expert observer as well as a critic of the upheavals and transformations of Israeli society, he obtained in 1995 his country's greatest cultural award, the prize of 'Israel.

Some, like Nitza Ben-Dov, professor of literature at the University of Haifa, consider him to be Israel's

 ”, others see in the breadth of his work even a “ 

 ”.

In 2012, he won the Prix Médicis Etranger and the Best Foreign Book Award with

, a melancholic 500-page novel on the mysteries of artistic creation, but also a kind of treatise on the clash of cultures between the East and the 'West.

common thread of the book is the making of a film featuring a famous Israeli director and his conflicting relationships with a screenwriter, an actress and a director of photography, illustrating the tensions that all creators come up against.

A society in crisis

La extra,

published in 2016, revolves around a society in crisis, knowing that Avraham Yehoshua especially digs into the question why more and more men and women do not want to have children.

In his latest novel,

, he echoes identity conflicts in the Middle East through the life of Rachele, a Jewish teenager, in an Ashkenazi family in Venice.

Among the general public, Yehoshua is best known for his commitment to peace, alongside writers Amos Oz and David Grossman.

Because, beyond literature, he never ceased to call for peace with all Palestinians.

Among other things, he participated in the Geneva Initiative for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

B'Tselem, an organization against the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, of which he was a member, paid tribute to him by speaking of a committed man who " 

 ”.

With his death, his political commitment and his literary power will henceforth be linked forever.

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