When asked a few hours before the ceremony about the Knesset’s new nation-state bill, which aims to stop Arabic being an official language in Israel, Kincaid – who converted to Judaism many years ago and is on her fifth visit here – says she read about it but hoped it wasn’t true. [...]
“Well, that seems to be a problem here. What do you do next? And the solution seems to be a cultivation of some of the worst things that have been directed at Jews themselves. How does this end? I mean, people use words like apartheid and colonization – that’s not what’s happening here. Something is, but I don’t think we’ve found the right words for it. It’s something new that’s going on, and maybe when you are in something, you can’t find the right words. It’s like apartheid – it might be heading that way. That language bill was not a good sign. What made people think that was a thing to do? It’s madness.” [...]
“I think one of the reasons this whole thing with the occupation and the territories is so alive is because most people do what Israelis do, just do it. They just do it! It’s not a conversation. You conquer the line, you drive the people off it, or you kill them. You know, you just do it. Then you move on. And maybe 100 years later, you have a little ceremony where you say, the head of state says, ‘I’m so sorry I did that.’ But you just do it. So yeah, it’s a burden,” she notes. “Every human being should get up every day and realize that to be alive is a burden. That’s a debate: Am I going to eat this; am I going to be cruel; am I going to be kind; who am I? And I suppose that’s what I like about being a Jew. It’s a burden.”
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