THE RUNDOWN | Amos Oz, beloved Israeli author and left-wing supporter of the cause for peace with the Palestinians, has passed away. What legacy does he leave behind and what has he inspired? Haaretz Daily Literary Editor Benny Ziffer discusses with host Calev Ben-David.

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Amos Oz, an illustrious writer famous for novels set throughout Israel’s history, died on Friday afternoon after short battle against cancer, according to a statement from his daughter.

‘My beloved father has just passed away from cancer after a swift deterioration,’ Fania Oz-Salzberger said in a short statement Friday. Oz passed ‘peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by loved ones,’ his daughter said, requesting that the public respect the family’s privacy.

Oz, born in Jerusalem in 1939 during Israel’s pre-State era, was beloved by Israelis young and old, though his left-leaning political views garnered criticism from conservatives.

‘Thank you to all who loved him,’ she concluded.

Oz began writing as a young man and began publishing his works in 1961, when he was 22. A year before, in 1960, he married his wife Nili, and the couple later raised three children.

Before attending Hebrew University and becoming a published author, Oz served in the Israeli Defense Forces Nahal (Combat) Brigade and was called back into service for the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

He has earned several dozen international and Israeli awards, including the Israel Prize for Literature, the Prix Femina, the Frankfurt Peace Prize, and the Officier des Arts et Lettres in France.

Many viewed him as a conscience of the nation, although he was repeatedly the target of criticism from Israel’s far right.

But while he was a consistent advocate of the creation of a Palestinian state, Oz also took a hard line against those sworn to Israel’s destruction and condemned every variety of religious fanaticism.He had little time for Western analysts who ‘assume that the Israelis and the Palestinians need to get to know each other better’ to resolve the Middle East conflict.

‘It must be resolved through a painful compromise, and not through having coffee together,” he told the Paris Review in a 1996 interview.’

Rivers of coffee drunk together cannot extinguish the tragedy of two peoples regarding the same little country as their own and only homeland. We need to divide it. We need to work out a mutually acceptable compromise.

‘Since the news of his death, Oz has been eulogized by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin who called the late writer a “giant spirit.’

‘Here in the Land of Israel and throughout the world, your works will reverberate in the writings that you have left in all our hearts,’ Rivlin said, adding that Israel would descend into the Sabbath in ‘sadness’ on Friday night.

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