He also is a far-out thinker (* see below), unnecessarily provocative and, I would assert, is woefully wrong on most issues. Way back when jusrt after the Oslo Accords, he (in)famously said that if the Pals. attack us after we give back territory, then we have the right to bomb the hell out of them, a right he quickly forgot about during the Defensive Shield operation.
Previously last year, he blamed Jews for antisemitism.
Now, he's run into trouble with Washington's Jewish elite:-
At Washington symposium, famed Israeli writer says future of Jewish people rests on Israeli identity alone and not on Judaism; Audience of Diaspora Jews disturbed by comments
WASHINGTON - During a forum on the future of the Jewish people, renowned Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua emphasized his Israeli identity as superior in importance to his Judaism, spurring discomfort and awkwardness among his audience.
“My identity is Israeli,” Yehoshua told participants in a Washington symposium marking a century since the establishment of the American Jewish Committee. The author added the Jewish religion does not play a role for him and said the territory and language is what creates his identity as an Israeli.
During the forum held in the United States Library of Congress building, the Israeli author purported that the past 100 years were a failure in terms of the development of the Jewish people. He argued that one’s identity is crafted by his environment and the land he lives in. A Jewish Israeli is not the same thing as a Jewish Frenchman; every Jew has an identity linked to the territory he lives in, Yehoshua said. Whoever sits in Israel and daily makes dozens of fateful and relevant decisions for the continued existence of the Jews, he is the one ensuring continuity, he added.
Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, rejected Yehoshua’s statements. Yehoshua is taking the concept “Jewish” and narrowing it down to mean just Israeli, Wieseltier said. The concept of Judaism existed long before Israel was established.
The audience in the auditorium was astonished by Yehoshua’s statements, and a few of the panelists and guests referred to the tireless contributions and efforts of American Jews towards the State of Israel in rejecting Yehoshua’s statements.
The panel moderator, news anchor Ted Koppel, was also ruffled by the comments and told Yehoshua that the great contributions of Diaspora Jews to the continuity of the Jews as a people could not be disregarded.
"There is something very very special, universal and easily identifiable among all Jews; it is beyond territory, it is something we all have in common," Koppel said.
Executive Director of the AJC David Harris described Yehoshua as very impassioned, but subscribing to a classical Zionist viewpoint which considers the Diaspora as marginal and irrelevant to the future of the Jewish people.
...many in the audience were insulted by his words, which cancel out their own role in helping to shape Judaism’s future.
Insulted?
He's been writing and speaking about this theory for 30 years. In 1980, his book, "B'zchut HaNormali'ut" came out and in English: Between Right and Right (essays) [Bein Zechut Le-Zechut, 1980]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday, 1981. And I heard him mspout off this theory in England in 1976.
(*)
It is absolutely mind-boggling that people are often unable to see the simple truth, even when they are looking directly at it. A good example is A.B. Yehoshua, a stalwart of the Israeli liberal left. In a July 21 article in The Jerusalem Post, speaking about "a new wave of hatred towards Jews [that] swept across the Arab and Muslim world" he suggests that "the cause and motive of this outbreak of animosity and rejection [of the Jews] must be analyzed."
He writes that "we Jews [must] become more adept at deciphering reality, take pains not to delude ourselves." However, he then completely fails to do this, because he takes the Six-Day War as the starting point of the Jewish-Arab conflict. While criticizing traditional Orthodox Jewry for its refusal "to confront the issue of anti-Semitism and study its causes," he himself does not even touch the issue of Muslim Judeo-phobia, thus missing the only chance to "decipher reality."
He deludes himself and his readers by completely ignoring the religious component of the Arab "rejection of the Jews." Only by taking it into account can we understand why all efforts at appeasement in dealing with the Arabs will always fail. One must analyze the ways that the Prophet Muhammad
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