The actress Chava Ortman, who played the role of the Moroccan grandmother in “Zagori Imperia”, compared the attitudes of Israelis towards the occupation to that of the Germans during the Nazi regime in an interview with Ynet. Ortman mentioned that due to the presence of the Holocaust in her home, she sought out different materials with the banality of evil. She spoke about the human mechanism of ignoring and closing our eyes towards evil, and how it is present all the time. Ortman also noted that most people do not reach a place of knowledge or take responsibility in drawing conclusions about different levels of knowledge. She concluded by stating that people need to recognize how much freedom they have to choose and how many young people don’t know the situation yet. The article also includes a section about talkbacks that weren’t sent due to a communication issue.
Zagori Imperia (PR photo)
In an interview with Ynet, the actress Chava Ortman, who is known as the Moroccan grandmother in “Zagori Imperia”, compared the “occupation” and the attitude of the Israelis towards it to the attitude of the Germans during the Nazi regime. The veteran actress gave the interview on the occasion of the release of the play “Secretary” by Christopher Hampton, based on the testimony of Brunnhilde Pomzel, the secretary of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, in which she plays.
“Because of the presence of the Holocaust in my home, I searched for many years for as many materials as possible on the banality of evil,” Ortman said. “I asked myself how the Germans did it. The human mechanism of closing our eyes and ignoring evil is a mechanism that exists all the time. God forbid it should be heard that I am comparing the most terrible evil of the Nazis to another evil.”
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“There are different levels of knowledge – there is general knowledge like we have about the occupation that is happening near us, there is internalization of the information and there is drawing conclusions. I recognize this from my personal life and I also recognize it in our public. Most people in the world do not reach a place of knowledge, of taking responsibility and drawing conclusions. Most of them have cataracts on the eyes and then cataracts on the heart, on the thought.”
When asked, “How do you remove this cataract?”, Ortman answered: “Here and there there are people who remove it. I don’t know what percentage of my cataract I remove. In the matter of the occupation, no cataract hides it. The political reality in which people allow the evil of The occupation has existed for decades. Now, with what is happening here, it just hit close to home. The question is how do we allow evil, how do we look away from it, how do we reconcile with it and cooperate. No one takes responsibility for its prevention, Only a few. The rest deny or turn their eyes away from him. The question is how free a person is to choose. How much a German in Germany at the time could choose, and how many Israelis today can choose.”
“There are many people who are now joining the activism struggle of the left, and say, ‘I didn’t know how serious the situation was.’ In recent demonstrations, they carry signs about the occupation. Not now, they say, it’s not appropriate.”
“Where did Ben Gabir and Smotrich come from? From the occupation. Why do they want this revolution? To perpetuate the inequality of the Palestinians in our midst. The silence in the face of injustice everywhere is the same silence, not only in Germany. Even when there are hungry children or old people here. How many people do not Did disabled people join the disabled people’s demonstrations? The majority were silent.”
“I don’t think there are many young people who really know the situation. I stand every Shabbat at Gesher Halacha, as part of our activity, and people ask us, what kind of occupation are you protesting. This is the result of a decades-long propaganda machine of the right-wing government that completely imitates the Green Line, His presence in our lives. There is no occupation. Everything has normalized. We got used to it.”
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