Published: 2 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, my father beat me, cursed me and humiliated me. The violence was creative: He dragged me from the house and tossed me into the yard. He called me filth. This wasn’t a passing loss of his temper or a slap on the cheek here and there, but a routine of sadistic abuse. My crime was me myself, and so the punishment was endless. He had a need to be sure I would break.
We lived on a kibbutz. My bed, my clothes – it was all at the children’s house. I only visited my parents for a few hours each day. But even that was too much. This is not your house, they told me, go to the children’s house. The norms of the communal sleeping quarters for kibbutz children at the time were already problematic; my neglect went far beyond that.
My father beat my mother. It happened in my presence. But she completely abnegated herself before him, and on the rare occasions when she dared to show anger or pain he crushed and silenced her. When it came to me, they were a united front. She cooperated with him and found excuses to distance me. I was rejected and hated, but they didn’t shut me out completely. Tyranny requires victims and, like all battered children, I came back again and again seeking closeness, hoping that something would change.
There was terror at home, and constant pretending in front of strangers. I write the word terror, because the threat of violence always hung in the air, and that was enough to sow fear and maintain control. The intimidation and pretence were intertwined: Our family microcosm, in which one horrible incident followed another, existed not only to satisfy some cruel impulse in my father, but also to keep a threat continuously hanging over our heads, preventing any complaints from leaking into the outside world.
FULL STORY: My Father, Amos Oz, sadistically abused me. the punishment was endless: the first chapter of Galia Oz's new book (Haaretz)
Cartoon: Tamar Blumenfeld
