Hundreds pay tribute to Israeli novelist Amos Oz

Mourners filed into a Tel Aviv theater to pay final respects to Israeli novelist Amos Oz. 

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Long lines of mourners snaked out of the Tzavta Theater in Tel Aviv on Monday, where the casket of Israeli author Amos Oz was on display.

Famous Israelis were among the hundreds who gathered to pay their respects, including politicans, writers, editors and actors, according to the Ynet news site.

Amos Oz, 79, died on Friday after a brief battle with cancer. He was buried on Monday at 3 p.m. at Kibbutz Hulda in central Israel, where he lived for many years.

The winner of many literary prizes, Oz wrote 40 books which were translated into some 45 languages. Among his most famous was “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” which was made into a film in 2015 by Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman.

The New York Times, in its obituary, described him as one of “Israel’s most prolific writers and respected intellectuals.”

However, Oz was also attacked for his extreme left-wing views, which he adopted early in his life, breaking with his politically right-wing family at the age of 14 to become as Socialist-Zionist.  In a New Yorker interview, when asked why he didn’t move to Tel Aviv rather than a kibbutz, he said, “Tel Aviv was not radical enough – only the kibbutz was radical enough”

Oz was an early supporter of the two-state solution, which called for granting Palestinians a state in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.