Interview by David Reinharc
David Reinharc: You go out Actes Sud seven novels across the country , short stories inspired by the Middle East. What difference do you make between your Jewish identity and that identity that you claim as "Wandering Jew"?
Georges Moustaki: For me, being Jewish, Wandering Jew is to be, universal.
I do not feel any affiliation or a movement or a geographic location or a dogma of any kind.
The Wandering Jew is a cliché used my song for me to define what often seems universal.
DR: Right now it is anti-Semitic in the name of the universal against a small nation particular which is an affront to a world of brotherhood and mixed compound of "wandering Jew" , want to exist. other words, the anti-Semite Modern Jewish hate in the name of the "Wandering Jew" ...
GM: Here, we leave Semitism: the creation of a Jewish state has polarized the Jewish inspiration of a certain part of the Jewish population.
This is not because we are Jewish we are Zionist, not because it is Jewish is Israeli and what is not because we are Jewish we are in line with what Israeli leaders say.
I lived seventeen years of my life in Egypt without suffering from being Jewish, instead, was an identity highly respected.
If you go today in the synagogue of Alexandria, you will see that it is very secure, because there are conflicts in the region but it is not isolated: it is a welcoming place.
Unfortunately, the politics of the region and international politics make the gulf of misunderstanding is widening every day a little more but it is a manipulation of people power.
I like to think I am a Jew who belongs to a large community that has no flag, no country or borders or anything. I'm Jewish by the sensitivity to certain values. All
Otherwise, they are nationalists, antagonisms, people who compete unnecessarily and in my collection of stories, my intention is to debunk the value of this confrontation.
Done in a playful, smiling, humorous, poetic, but the message is: you build a wall and that wall that separates people eventually bring them together because they are suffering on both sides. This separation point becomes a point of contact.
For me, being Jewish is something one inherits: we can accept it or not. I am a Jew because they told me that I was Jewish, I was circumcised, I Do a minimum of ritual. But I have not been integrated into a Jewish thought at some point in my life whatsoever.
RD: Your father was not a believer ...
GM: And my mother was away. Our identity is not defined by our Jewishness.
We were both Greeks and Italians - because qu'Italophones. By living in Egypt, had also married Egyptian lifestyle and being Jewish, was one of the many hats that identity could have. Therefore
for which I am opposed to what is sometimes fit in a community to which I belong not totally because I belong to others at the same time.
I agree with both the French culture as a susceptibility Jewish or Egyptian lifestyle and I did not feel compelled to make a choice.
DR: Even if your Jewishness does not exhaust all your identity when you condemn and attack as a Jew, do not you answer a Jew?
GM: I never been attacked as a Jew. I do not know how I would react.
DR: You'll do two concerts in Tel Aviv.
Will you sing on the "holy land" as you would sing anywhere else?
GM. : Not like anywhere because I have friends and relatives.
And is the Middle East, a story to which I belong even if not totally.
If I decided to become Israeli, I would get anyway this law of return.
There are countries with which I weave and Israel links in part but not a separate country.
DR: In the album Vagabond you sing Private: story of a Jew who goes disillusioned ...
GM: Yes, a fundamental disappointment: he would rather be a farmer and became a soldier.
DR: by force of circumstance ...
GM: We can say things like that. It has not announced initially that it would become fighter and he would risk killing people. It is party making the desert bloom and was asked to take a gun and commit suicide.
This is not an indictment against the country but against the warmongering, against deception, against people who can say things and make others.
This was controversial in the Jewish community who accused me of being antisemitic, anti Israel.
But I think this song could have been written by one of those who founded the settlements of Gaza. They were cheated the same way. They were told: "You're home, it's your country." They went there and they have become pariahs. It
Song of the doubt, lies, it's a song against war, against imposture.
DR: About the size of two French departments, surrounded by 22 hostile countries, do not you attack heroically to a colossus with feet of clay?
GM: No, Israel is very strong. He does not have feet of clay.
Its danger is the force that prevents a human opening sometimes.
DR: It's not hard to talk about Israel without living there while the Israelis are suffering in their flesh and know all the days of anguish, suffering, anguish?
GM: You've noticed that I have not been conclusive ruling on Israel.
It's almost a country like the others I am not authorized to speak authoritatively.
This country has many strengths and, yes, he has feet of clay but this weakness is its excessive force. He developed an attitude of supremacy that blocks the relations with its neighbors.
is a vicious cycle: violence breeds violence in both directions and there are not that hype power, one would like to talk rather than fight. My Jewishness
train inclinations sometimes sentimental, sometimes it's personal, other times through the news I get but I'm not very keen vision of anything.
My songs are works of emotion and not works of criticism or controversy, and even less analysis.
The soldier's song is a song with emotion: I do not generalize, I talk to the first.
What these soldiers are forced to fight, that the survival of their countries depend, I agree. I do not know what I would do it for them. But I make things as I see.
Speaking of Israel without being there or being? There is an emotional bond that developed between the Jews and the country. But this is not a matter of daily, is a country that has its leaders, its army, its artists, its power. its weakness. One can not constantly be listening to what is happening. I wish Israel
leaders like Rabin, intellectuals like Leibowitz, who had a lofty vision of the country's history.
I hope Israel is not the strongest or most successful but better fed values that have contributed to its existence.
DR: What is an obstacle to peace today is the Palestinian claim of "right of return". Do you understand?
GM: Things have changed: the law of return evokes the Palestinians today is no longer viable.
DR: Yet this claim that has derailed the Camp David and Taba!
GM: It was not that. It is true that the law of return is something that needs to be examined with a spirit of justice. We must find a way to bring justice to people who have been cheated, it is indispensable.
was just a bargaining issue and it was accepted as such.
DR: Is there too, in this case, negotiate the right of return for Jews who left Arab countries?
GM: I think it's just rhetoric.
Jews who left Arab countries are parties, in their majority, voluntarily. Some were driven
but from the time the conflict has perverted the situation reports.
I lived in Egypt seventeen years and I've never been attacked as a Jew, I have not suffered and I think there was a language to find that harmony continues.
I sing in Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, I was invited to sing in Syria - but it will not happen.
my privilege not to give up my beliefs, do not give up my identity and to express myself in any sort of country. True
privilege because people can not dare do the same thing.
DR: You go too soon in Tel Aviv. What you imagine
peace for Israel with Palestine under Islamic rule?
GM: The danger of religious radicalization exists both in Israel and Arab countries.
These are weapons that are held up because people together. See Sharon puts the yarmulke to the Council of Ministers, which has nothing to do with the Zionist mission, secular ideology.
I would fight religious fanaticism if I could afford it, but I would fight anywhere.
wars of former Yugoslavia, are religious wars. The wars in the Middle East, too.
If you leave the field of religion, there is serenity.
DR: Nazism and communism, two world wars were made on behalf of atheism, no?
GM: Yes, they have taken over the ingredient with other clothes.
yesterday I saw on TV a film about the Gestapo was the transposition of religious indoctrination.
DR: You are the author of "Son of the fog." Do you understand these Ashkenazi Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust, whose relatives had not been entitled to a burial who found there, in Israel, a land to die and thus to exist?
GM: I'm not a European. The Holocaust is part of a very painful story to the world. As a Jew, I never knew What was the emotional shock of the European Jews. I had a shock like any man of sensibility can have it. All this symbolism there, I can understand, approve, being moved but I have not lived in the same situation as those who have really suffered. I wrote a story about a friend of mine, Siegfried Meir, who spent his childhood Auschwitz. I realized how much suffering we can mark and destroy us. But having grown up in a different context, my report to this story is more intellectual than lived.
DR: In this case, you must surely understand the terrible anxiety of the Israelis, when reading this excerpt from the preamble of the Charter of Hamas, winner of the elections, "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Does Islam to destroy it, as it has destroyed other before. "
GM: What are the speeches that we should not ignore but it must not be used to raise the sauce.
DR: January 39, Hitler "prophesied" the "extermination of the Jews."
Everything was written in Mein Kampf ...
GM: I have not read Mein Kampf . I was told that Hitler had a Jewish grandmother. I was told many things.
There are those who are in line with those of which you speak and there Yossi Beilin met a Palestinian who sees and constructive contacts rather than look for reasons to hate and make war.
DR: Nevermind the monstrous rumor about an alleged Jewish grandmother Hitler ...
You are multilingual. Have you seen the beautiful film Nurith Aviv that evokes the intimate bond forged between the Hebrew language learned and adopted and the language of childhood?
GM: Yes and I really enjoyed it. I changed four times languages: Greek, Italian, Arabic and French. No language has obscured another. French is the language I was most enriched. But I did not get rid of another language. Instead, the French I speak is fed Knowledge of other languages. I even learned Hebrew thereafter, English, Portuguese. What is difficult for some immigrants, whose language of communication is more professional tool is to arrive in Israel and having to sacrifice the language that was as important a part of their lives. I have not been placed in this case but it's true that the challenge of reviving a language and make it a natural language to create a nation requires sacrifices. And those sacrifices there are very demanding. This, at least how I decoded the film.
DR: So we will soon have the pleasure to listen to Israel.
Do you sing the same songs today? Something does change in you that you will sing differently?
GM: I do not do songs from an era. I belong to an era that makes me want to write songs. But at the same time, this is not solely dependent on what happens around me. Yal'inspiration it from the outside and one inside. I wrote songs that seem timeless. I always sing and they still face the same plays. There is the same reaction to my songs today than thirty years ago. My creative vision is not aligned to what is happening in the world. I am neither a writer nor a journalist. Let the news is timeless, it is sometimes.
interview published in Israel Magazine No. 63
