José Saramago's False Courage

The words of protest José Saramago never uttered against dictatorship in Portugal he unleashed against democracy in Israel.

Jose Saramago, Nobel laureate in literature and anti-Semite, died Friday aged 87.

Saramago won his prize in 1998. He put his new global fame to the service of a new cause: denunciations of Israel. But unlike other European anti-Zionists, Saramago explicitly connected his dislike of Israel to his feelings about Jews.

In a speech in Brazil on Oct. 13, 2003, Saramago reportedly unburdened himself of this thought about the world's Jews:

Living under the shadows of the Holocaust and expecting to be forgiven for anything they do on behalf of what they have suffered seems abusive to me. They didn't learn anything from the suffering of their parents and grandparents.

It was Judaism itself that Saramago blamed for everything he disliked in Israel. He wrote in the Spanish newspaper El Pais on April 21, 2002:

[C]ontaminated by the monstrous and rooted 'certitude' that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God ... the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: 'Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.'

A few weeks previous, Saramago had visited Ramallah. The visit occurred shortly after the Passover 2002 suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, that killed 30 people and wounded 140 more. Saramago expressed no grief for these murdered innocents. Instead, he toured areas damaged during fighting between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces and pronounced to a Portuguese radio interviewer: "[I]n Palestine, there is a crime which we can stop. We may compare it with what happened at Auschwitz."

Most European critics of Israel try to draw some kind of line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The line may be half-hearted and unconvincing, but still -- they try. Saramago ignored such niceties. He followed the example of Middle Eastern anti-Zionists: He hated Israel, he hated the Jews who lived there and he did not scruple to express his hatred bluntly.

In 2006, Saramago joined a group of other writers in a statement denouncing Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon: Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Canada's Naomi Klein. They accused Israel of plotting the "liquidation of the Palestinian nation."

When such personages hurl wild allegations, they are congratulated in some quarters for their "courage," their willingness to "speak out." What is interesting about the life of Jose Saramago is that it offers an actual test case of just how much courage these anti-Israel writers in fact possess.

Unlike Chomsky, Vidal, Zinn, Klein and the others, Saramago spent most of his life living in an unfree country. From the time Saramago was 10 until the year he turned 52, Saramago's Portugal was ruled by dictatorship. It was not an especially bloodthirsty dictatorship, but it censored the press, detained dissenters and waged a harsh war to hold onto its colonies in Africa. And during all that time, Jose Saramago did not speak out. He published some apolitical poetry. In 1969, he joined Portugal's clandestine Communist Party. But so long as it was risky to speak, Saramago kept quiet.

The dictatorship collapsed in 1974, replaced by a left-wing military junta. For a few months, it seemed that Portugal might lurch from one dictatorship to another. During this period, Saramago was installed as assistant editor of a formerly pro-regime newspaper. He promptly transformed the paper into an instrument of communist propaganda, dismissing employees who would not follow the party line. Happily, democratic forces prevailed. Elections were organized, the communist militias were dispersed and Portugal joined the European Community.

Saramago later described Portugal's turn to democracy as a day of "blackness" for him. He was fired from the newspaper in his turn. Now free to publish, he produced the novels that would win him acclaim. The words of protest he never uttered against dictatorship in Portugal he would now unleash against democracy in Israel.

Nobody requires a writer to be a hero. Much greater artists than Jose Saramago have been even worse human beings. The work stands apart from the individual. Posterity will judge Saramago's work on that work's own merit. But as for Jose Saramago the person, the celebrity, the activist: Posterity's verdict on him will be harsh.

Originally published in the National Post.