Assaf Harel: 'Apartheid has been here for ages!', last monolgue, Layla Tov with Assaf Harel - 2017

1 March 2017, Channel 10, Israel

Assaf Harel is a comedian who hosted the long running 'Good Night' program. This was his last monolgue.

I don’t want to dedicate this last monologue to a specific issue from the last few days, but to something more general: If you look at our life in Israel, it’s pretty great. Yeah, it’s expensive, and we’re far from earning what we would have liked. Clearly, the healthcare system could be better, and yeah, the politicians could be more impressive and less embarrassing, but if you look at our life from a bird’s eye view, we’re doing pretty great. Great weather, great food, great people, great beaches. It’s not so bad here, in general, and that’s exactly the point: that we’re doing great, but there are a couple of million people that we’re responsible for, and they’re in a horrible state. Infrastructure, food, healthcare, education. Millions who are living in abject poverty. Gaza is on the verge of plague. Hours on end without electricity or water. Israel controls everything that goes in or out.

“But they chose Hamas! Let them pay for it! Humanness? What does that have to do with us? What are we? Arab lovers?” Ever since the right wing took power, more and more voices are warning of apartheid. Are you kidding? Apartheid has been here for ages. Ages. It’s just that we’re on its good side, so it doesn’t really bother us. We’ve been abusing the Palestinians on a daily basis for years, denying them their basic rights. In Judea and Samaria, we’re taking their lands from them. Once, we used the Jewish National Fund to raise money to buy the lands. Today? We just pass a law saying we can just take their lands and that’s it. Soldiers shoot at stone-throwers because they’re a real threat, but if in Israel, someone throws stones, they won’t even be charged. Palestinian journalists are put on administrative detention without trial, because they wrote something. Every time we have a holiday, they’re under closure. God forbid they ruin it for us. For years, we’ve been deepening the hatred, the same hatred that we later complain about in peace talks. “Why do you incite your children against us?” “Why don’t you teach them to love us?”

Israel’s most impressive innovation, more than any high-tech project, or Rafael weapon, is our amazing ability to ignore what is happening mere kilometers away to our neighbours. A whole people, transparent, like it doesn’t exist. Not in the news, not online, not on social media, and definitely not in the hearts of the people. Nothing. We’ve got a great country, and great restaurants, and it’s fun to travel abroad. Just don’t tell us what’s really happening. We’re good. Don’t bum us out. But there are a few righteous in Sodom. People who see the Matrix and are trying to yell, to let us know what’s happening. Maybe we’ll wake up. Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Yesh Din. Dozens of organizations that are only trying to tell Israeli society what is happening, and what do people say about them in return? Extremist left. Illegitimate organizations. Now, understand, anyone who says ‘extremist left’ is trying to create an equivocation with the extreme right. And this way, the delegitimization of murderers like Baruch Goldstein, or the murderers of the Dawabshe family, will stick to organizations like Breaking the Silence of B’Tselem.

“Because we must condemn the extremists on both sides, right?” But they’re forgetting one small detail: On one side, the extremists kill, and on the other side, the “extremists” talk. On one side, the extremists burn people alive, and on the other side, the extremists demand human rights. There is no comparison between the extreme left and extreme right, because there is no such thing as extreme left. It’s fiction; an invention of the last few years. When we speak of rape, do we also speak of extremists on both sides that must be condemned? Those that rape and those who are embarrased to even touch a girl? Both are problematic, or only one side? When we speak of animal abuse, do we also condemn extremists on both sides? Those that abuse animals, and those that adopt them? No, because anyone who calls for humanness will never be extreme, but the people in the camp in which there are murderers will look for equal sides.

The human rights organizations are the most legitimate and healthy thing today in Israeli society. They are trying to wake a dormant society, a blocked society, and are benefitting our security more than any settlement or outpost, and the reason that Bennett and Bibi are so busy saying that they’re illegitimate is because they’re saying the truth about the occupation and of what’s happening, and Bibi and Bennett know that on the day Israeli citizens wake up and discover what’s happening beyond the Green Line, what it does to our soldiers, to the children that are raised there, to the elderly, to the families, to the millions of innocent people, what it costs our budget, our society, our economy. On that day, people will ask themselves if the occupied territories are really worth it. Because, from a security point of view, every Commander-in-Chief and all the generals have been saying for years that it’s nonsense. “The territories don’t defend us!”

That’s why I believe — Perhaps I’m convincing myself — that in the end, the the right wing will lose, becuase they’re afraid of the truth; of reality. They try to suppress it; to hide it; to prevent people from hearing it; prevent people from talking. But, in the end, it doesn’t take much to sedate the satiated side of the apartheid. But there’s a whole other side; a whole other people, and they’re here even if we don’t speak of them or recognize them, and we’ll pretend like it’s only us and God and the Promised Land.

If only once, we can wake up before the war, because up until now, we only wake up after. We had to have the Yom Kippur war to have peace with Egypt. We had to have the intifada for the Oslo Accords. If only for once, we could be smart enough to reach a peace agreement before the war. Worse case: after it, or another one after that, but in the end, we’ll wake up.

Stan Grant: 'But every time we are lured into the light, we are mugged by the darkness of this country's history', Ethics Centre IQ2 debate - 2015

27 October 2015, City Recital Hall, Sydney, Australia

This speech was delivered in an IQ2 debate with the topic, 'Racism is destroying the Australian dream'. Also for the affirmative was Pallavi Sinha. For the negative was Jack Thompson and Rita Panahi. The full debate is here. 

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming along this evening, and I'd also like to extend my respects to my Gadigal brothers and sisters from my people, the Wiradjuri people.

In the winter of 2015, Australia turned to face itself. it looked into its soul and it had to ask this question. Who are we? What sort of a country do we want to be.

And this happened in a place that is most holy, most sacred to Australians. It happened on the sporting field, it happened on the football field. Suddenly the front page was on the back page, it was in the grandstand.

Thousands of voices rose to hound an indigenous man, a man who was told he wasn’t Australian, a man who was told he wasn’t Australian of the Year.

And they hounded that man into submission.

I can’t speak for the what lay in the hearts of the people who booed Adam Goodes. But I can tell you what we heard when we heard those boos.

We heard a sound that is very familiar to us.

We heard a howl.

We heard a howl that of humiliation has echoes across two centuries of dispossession, injustice, suffering and survival.

We heard the howl of the Australian dream, and it said to us again, you’re not welcome.

The Australian dream.

We sing of it, and we recite it in verse.

Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free.

My people die young in this country, we die ten years younger than average Australians and we are far from free.

We are fewer than three percent of the Australian population and yet we are 25 percent, a quarter of those Australians locked up in our prisons, and if you are a juvenile it is worse, it’s fifty percent. An indigenous child is more likely to be locked up in prison than they are to finish high school.

I love a sunburned country

A land of sweeping plains

Of rugged mountain ranges

It reminds me that my people were killed on those plains, we were shot on those plains, disease ravaged us on those plains. I come from those plains. I come from a people west of the Blue Mountains, the Wiradjuri people, where in the 1820s the soldiers and settlers waged a war of extermination against my people. Yes, a war of extermination! That was the language used at the time, go to the Sydney Gazette, and look it up, and read about it. Martial law was declared, and my people could be shot on sight.

Those rugged mountain ranges, my people, women and children were herded over those ranges to their deaths.

The Australian dream.

The Australian dream is rooted in racism. It is the very foundation of the dream. It is there at the birth of the nation . It is there in terra nullius.  An empty land. A land for the taking.

Sixty thousand years of occupation.

A people who made the first seafaring journey in the history of mankind.

A people of law, a people of lore, a people of music and art and dance and politics, none of it mattered.

Because our rights were extinguished because we were not here according to British law. And when British people looked at us, they saw something subhuman, and if we were human at all, we occupied the lowest rung on civilisation’s ladder.

We were fly blown, stone age savages and that was the language that was used.

Charles Dickens, the great writer of the age, when referring to the noble savage of which we were counted among, said ‘it would be better that they be wiped off the face of the earth’. Captain Arthur Phillip, a man of enlightenment, a man who was instructed to make peace with the so called natives in a matter of years, was sending out raiding parties with instruction ‘bring back the severed heads of the black troublemakers’.

They were smoothing the dying pillow.  

My people were rounded up and put on missions, from where, if you escaped. You were hunted down, you were roped and tied and dragged back, and it happened here, it happened on the mission that my grandmother and great grandmother were from, the Warrengesda on the Darling Point of the Murrumbidgee River.

Read about it. It happened.

By 1901 when we became a nation, when we federated the colonies, we were nowhere. We’re not in the Constitution, save for ‘Race Provisions’ -- which allowed for laws to be made that would take our children, that would invade our privacy, that would tell us who we could marry and tell us where we could live.

The Australian dream.

By 1963, the year of my birth, the dispossession was continuing. Police came at gunpoint under cover of darkness to Mapoon an aboriginal community in Queensland, and they ordered people from their homes, and they burned those homes to the ground, and they gave the land to a bauxite mining company. And today those people remember that as ‘The Night of the Burning’.

In 1963 when I was born, I was counted amongst the flora and fauna, not among the citizens of this country.

Now you will hear things tonight, you will hear people say, ‘but you’ve done well!’

Yes I have, and I’m proud of it, and why have I done well?

I’ve done well because of who came before me.

I’ve done well because of my father, who lost the tips off three fingers working in saw mills to put food on our table, because he was denied an education.

My grandfather, who served to fight wars for this country when he was not yet a citizen and came back to a segregated land where he couldn’t even share a drink with his digger mates in the pub because he was black.

My great grandfather who was jailed for speaking his language to his grandson - my father - jailed for it!

My grandfather on my mother’s side who married a white woman who reached out to Australia, lived on the fringes of town, until the police came, put a gun to his head, bulldozed his tin humpy, and ran over over the graves of the three children he’d buried there.

That’s the Australian dream. I have succeeded in spite of the Australian dream, not because of it; and I have succeeded because of those people.

You might hear tonight, ‘but you have white blood in you.’ And if the white blood in me was here tonight, my grandmother, she would  tell you of how she was turned away from a hospital giving birth to her first child because she was giving birth to the child of a black person.

The Australian dream. We’re better than this.

I’ve have seen the worst of the world as a reporter. I’ve spent a decade in war zones, from Iraq to Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We are an extraordinary country, we are in so many respects the envy of the world. If I were sitting here, where my friends are tonight (gestures to opponents] I would be arguing passionately for this country.

But I stand here with my ancestors, and the view looks very different from where I stand.

The Australian dream.

We have our heroes.

Albert Namatjira painted the soul of this nation.

Vincent Lingiari put his hand out for Gough Whitlam to pour the sand of his country through his fingers, and say ‘this is my country’.

Cathy Freeman lit the torch for the Olympic Games.

But every time we are lured into the light, we are mugged by the darkness of this country's history.

Of course racism is killing the Australian dream! It is self evident that it is killing the Australian dream.

But we are better than that.

The people who stood up and supported Adam Goodes and said, ‘no more’, they are better than that.

The people who marched across the bridge for reconciliation, they are better than that.

The people who supported Kevin Rudd when he said sorry to the Stolen Generations, they are better than that.

My children and their non indigenous friends are better than that.

My wife who is non indigenous is better than that.

And one day I want to stand here, and be able to say as proudly and sing as loudly as anyone in this room, Australians all let us rejoice.

Thanks you.

Stan Grant was a wonderful guest on episode 8 of the podcast, talking about this speech.

Elie Wiesel: 'Indifference, the most insidious danger of all', Nobel Prize acceptance - 1986

Video available at Nobelprize.com

10 December 1986, Stoickholm, Sweden

According to Jewish tradition, there are moments where one must make a blessing and give a benediction, and this is such a moment. With your permission, your majesty, this is such a moment. [gives blessing - Hebrew]

Thank you oh lord for giving us this day ...

It is with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor, the highest there is, that you have chosen to bestow upon me. I know: your choice transcends my person. Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished?

Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf?

I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. Yet at moments such as this I sense their presence, I always do. I sense my parents. I sense my little sister. How can I not sense, how can I not sense the presence of those who were part of you. Friends, teachers, companions.

But this honour belongs to those who remember them. This honour belongs to all the survivors, to their children, and through us, to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.

I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago, a young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The decrees. The persecution. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of my people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember that young boy asked his father: "Tell me" he said, "Can this be true?" This is the twentieth century after all. This is not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?"

And now that very boy is turning to me: "Tell me," he says. "What have you done with my years? What have you done with your life which is mine?"

And then I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive. That I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices. We could not prevent their deaths the first time. But if we forget them they will be killed a second time and this time it will be our responsibility.

So I also explained to that boy how naive he was, how naive we all were -- the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.

We must speak. We must take sides. For neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.

Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Of course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my people's memory and tradition, my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. For I belong to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude of my people. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my own. It would be unnatural for me not to love Isreael with all my heart, as I do.

Please remember what I remember. Isreal if god forbid defeated, it would be the end of Israel. The only country in the world which is so endangered totally in its existence. How can people such as myself not think in these terms.

But I am also of course committed to Soviet Jews who need freedom. And Jews in Arab lands who need solidarity. But I said that Jewish priorities are my first priorities, but they are not exclusive. Others as important to me. Other people, other ideas, other situations, other tragedies matter to me.

Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. To me, Andrei Sakharov's isolation is as much of a disgrace as Josef Biegun's imprisonment, and Ivan Nudl's exile. As is the denial of Solidarity and its leader Lech Walesa's right to dissent. And Nelson Mandela's interminable imprisonment.

There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution. Certain fascist regimes, like in Chile, or Marxist regimes like in Ethiopia and other places of the world, where writers and poets are prisoners, and there are so many prisoners in so many lands -- by the Left and the extreme left and by the Right and the extreme right.

Now you know as I do that human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? Human suffering anywhere, concerns men and women everywhere. And in spite of what some extreme critics have said about me,  that principle applies in my life also to the Palestinians, to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore when they lead to violence.

Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers. I know they are frustrated, and that is understandable, and something must be done about it. The refugees in the refugee camps and their misery, the children and their fear, the uprooted and their hopelessness, I know. Something must be done about their situation, I know that too.

Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have lost too many sons, and shed too much blood. This must stop. And all attempts to stop it must be encoruaged, peacefully.  Israel will cooperate, I am sure of that. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.

Yes, I have faith. I have faith in the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I even have faith in His creation. Without faith no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference. Indifference, the most insidious danger of all. Isn't this the meaning of Alfred Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear of war a shield against war?

There is so much to be done, and there is much that can be done. I have learned it in my life, one person – a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King -- one person of integrity, of courage, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. And therefore I know that as long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom cannot be true. As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with anguish and shame. For I have seen children hungry. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years. It is in his name that I speak to you and that I express to you my deepest gratitude. No one is capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour is an offering; and not to share them would mean to betray them and mean not to be worthy of them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.

Thank you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the Nobel Committee. Thank you, people of Norway, for declaring on this singular occasion that our survival has meaning for mankind.