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Com no podia ser d'una altra manera, sempre després de les intervencions de Cristina Andreu, va començar parlant de la vinculació de la seva música amb les seves arrels. Va ser la part més relaxada, on la cantant va respondre llargament les preguntes, i on va tenir temps d'explicar que havia tornat a Israel des dels Estats Units "per amor". Després de disset anys al món de la música, amb dos fills, i d'haver estat pensant en el present i el futur, va relatar que ara li tocava explorar el passat, "mirar enrere". "Pots avançar un pas, però sempre vens d'un lloc", va recordar. Per això, va desvetllar que havia demanat a la seva àvia que li expliqués coses sobre els orígens de la seva família al Iemen, un país que mai ha vist, però que somnia trepitjar un dia.
El segon apartat va servir per veure una Noa molt convençuda en favor de la pau però també molt decidida en defensa del poble israelià. Va criticar el "fanatisme" de Hamas qualificant els seus militants de "terroristes" i va anivellar la seva acció a la dels nazis que van exterminar sis milions de jueus. Això li costaria alguna intervenció posterior des del públic força crítica. Ella es defensaria dient que la solució era "molt complexa" i que els palestins, tot i haver escollit democràticament Hamas, tenen un "règim violent" i que mentre aquest partit mani "no es podrà parlar de pau". Això sí, va admetre que el partit havia estat impulsat per Israel per rebaixar la força d'Al-Fatah i que "Israel no pot votar un partit de dretes" si vol la pau, després de manifestar-se públicament d'extrema esquerra.
Per Noa la resolució del conflicte no passa per crear un estat "binacional" a la zona palestino-israeliana. La seva aposta és "començar per baix", ensenyant valors com l'educació i l'ètica. I va reclamar que es reconeguin més les incansables activitats dels pacificistes. "El que fan no és "sexy" -pels mitjans- és avorrit. Però les bombes i les guerres, sí", va lamentar. Aquí va reclamar que es tinguin més en compte aquests lluitadors per la pau que es juguen la vida. Quan se li va preguntar sobre el futur president dels Estats Units va dir amb força: "Creuo els dits perquè guanyi Obama. Cantar per la pau -com fa ella- no és res en comparació amb un president negre. És com si un jueu fos president a Alemanya!". 
Van seguir els tocs divertits, sense oblidar la seriositat del tema a tractar, quan va parlar del paper de les dones en la societat. Va dir que amb el seu marit formen un "equip" i va recordar que "totes les espècies saben que sense la femella no hi ha continuïtat. Ho saben això els homes? Són els més intel·ligents i els més burros. No poden quedar embarrassats!". Després de dir que hi ha països on la dona encara és "torturada", va assenyalar que al món occidental també hi ha camí per recórrer". 
Per acabar la crònica, una frase que serveix per reflexionar sobre la superació de conflictes fins i to a nivell llocal: "És impossible aconseguir el diàleg si les parts no estan obertes a fer-ho. El sentit justicier que alguns fan de la justícia és el nostre gran enemic".

INTERVIEW NOA

Q: I had been living in Israel for two years in a very difficult period, during the invasion of Lebanon, the killings of Sabra and Shatila; but I had never seen the country in such a state of shock as after the Murder of Itzchak Rabin. What did you feel that night on the 4th November 1995 in that square in Tel Aviv?

Noa: From your question I get the impression that you perceive Israel to be a very sensitive, free, open, and generally humanistic society. Much like spain and the rest of the free world. Well it is! Israelis were sensitive enough to criticize their own government during a retaliatory operation against a PLO armed "state" in south Lebanon attacking northern Israel in much the same way that Hamas has been operating against southern Israel lately. Israelis were sensitive enough to call for a national judicial investigative committee after Lebanese Maronite Christian Arab militias under the command of Eli Hobeika (later Lebanese parliament member and minister) massacred civilians in Sabra and Shatila. Many Israelis knowing the brutal reputation of internal Arab massacres in Lebanon ( black Saturday, Damour, Karantina, October 13th, Safra and Tel al Zaatar massacres which claimed about 4500 casualties altogether) felt at the time that Ariel Sharon and the army GHQ should have foreseen such atrocities and should have prevented them. Israelis are sensitive enough to consider exchanging hundreds of Hezbollah and Hamas prisoners including the cold blooded murderer Samir Kuntar, for two Israeli POWs and most probably only for their remains!!! In light of this obviously the country was in a state of shock when Rabin was murdered by an Israeli citizen.
A pluralistic society based on real freedom is, and should be very tolerant towards extremely disturbing views coming from all directions. But there is a red line and political murder is a blatant crossing of it. A good demonstration of that was the dismantling of settlements from the Gaza strip and the Israeli army pullout, performed by Sharon. Extremists had all the reasons in their warped world view to assassinate PM Sharon but they did not! It all went surprisingly quickly and quietly. Rabin symbolized hope for a peaceful settlement with the Palestinian people. I whole heartedly support the peace process as do the majority of Israeli citizens. We were all ecstatic with joy seeing the hundreds of thousands that came to show support for Prime Minister Rabin on that fateful November 4th night. I was there singing for peace with all my heart. Moments later my joy turned to horror which left me and the whole country devastated to this very day. 

Q: Many years have passed. Many opportunities have been missed. The last serious attempt to seal a peace agreement at the Camp David Summit in July 2000 resulted in failure. Who has missed more opportunities, the Israelis or the Palestinians?

Noa: An opportunity missed is always an opportunity missed by both sides. Still the question may be asked: an opportunity for what? If the answer is: for real peace where the price is a territorial compromise then the Palestinians missed more since we Israelis have had a flourishing state for 60 years now and they unfortunately still do not have one . However If the answer is: an opportunity for so called "justice" as commonly seen from the Moslem Arab perspective, meaning: the demise of Israel and its Jewish population (and a lot of its Arab population if we consider what Hamas people did to PLO people in Gaza or the Sabra & Shatila massacre which you've mentioned before), then nothing was lost and the whole process was just a façade for a much more sinister ideology. Fortunately, the peace process has survived the murders of president Saadat and PM Rabin and the death of PA President Arafat. It has seen many changes of governments and still it's alive and kicking. This demonstrates the genuine aspirations of both people for peace in spite of the missed opportunities.

Q: With the break out of the second Intifada in autumn 2000, the Israeli peace camp looked like it was going to surrender. It was if fear had made good the speech of the right. Later came Sharon and the wall, and since then few voices have been heard criticising Israel. Too few?

Noa: Both the Israeli and Palestinian peace camps never tire! Sadly enough it does not seem that way because the media tends to project whatever sells best at any given moment and we all know very well that fear rates higher then hope. To the argument that free press is a business and that we best accept it unless we prefer "Pravda" like Bolshevik press, I will answer: true, but we still can and should call upon all journalists, wherever they are, to refrain from sensational, shallow, detrimental journalism, and stick to good ethical practice. We should urge them to seriously search and research the truth and to fairly project doubt and ambivalence remembering that so often they are the only "objective truth" so many people are exposed to. 
Referring to the question about the separation wall, I feel it is a defensive act of frustration not a substitute for dialogue. It is worth mentioning that since the construction of the wall the number of buses blowing up in the streets of Israeli cities has shrunk to nothing! Of course I'm frustrated by its being a unilateral act and I totally support, together with many Israeli organizations whose work you are obviously and sadly unaware of, all legal protests and lawsuits bent upon alleviating the unnecessary suffering of innocent people. On a hopeful note, I'm convinced that the wall along with all other obstacles will disappear once a peace agreement is signed. 

Q:You are a defender of the 2003 Geneva agreements. The solution for the two states with a small exchange of territory, share Jerusalem with the Palestinians. But there are those who say, both in Israel and in Palestine, that the solution for the two states is now impossible. There are too many settlements, the Palestinians are too weak and divided.

Do you believe that sooner or later a binational state will be established which is today Israel-Palestine?


Noa: To answer this difficult question we must try to understand the meaning of national and bi-national state. 
The rationale behind a Jewish/ Israeli national state is threefold.

1. The national historic memory which goes back over two millennia: this shared memory has connected all Jewish people around the world for centuries.
Touching upon the validity of historic memory the same goes for the Palestinian refugees of 47-48. Both sides’ propaganda tends to deny the legitimacy of this argument when coming from the other side. Ask the Palestinians if they would forget their origins if we persistently ignore them 10 more years? 100 more years? A 1000 more years? 2000 more years? I'm sure they will unanimously reply "no way!" well neither would we, except that we, the Jewish people have already lived through the experience. We remember the golden age and the massacres, the harmony and the inquisition, the acceptance and the expulsion over hundreds of years; still we do not claim the Iberian Peninsula as a homeland. We remember exactly where we came from and we wish the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world would respect our memory just as they demand we respect theirs. This mutual recognition is the first step towards peace. Territorial compromise will follow, I can assure you!

2. The second argument is the right of an indigenous minority for self expression. The Jews were a minority in Palestine since the Roman conquerors gave it that name, and all through the Ottoman Empire rule of the 16th to 20th century. This argument goes along with the right of any people for at least one safe and peaceful territory free of fear and of the threat of persecution. 

3. The need, and the right of the Hebrew culture, with its secular and religious writings and its living, spoken language, for a territory on which it can flourish safely. This requires a different level of autonomy then the one securing the right of individuals in a free pluralistic society to follow their people's traditions. These subtleties are probably most understood here in Spain where different indigenous people with different languages and cultures demand various degrees of autonomy.

Addressing the issue of bi- or multi-nationalism I can carefully say that yes! In the long run we should all strive to construct a multinational, free, democratic, pluralistic, tolerant, orderly, secular and generally humanistic society. How long is the long run? Pretty long considering the fact that a most liberal European society such as yours as well as the rest of the western free world are still struggling with these issues domestically! Pretty long because the Jewish people, their culture and language, have no alternative territory but a tiny strip of its historic homeland, so we have to be pretty stubborn about fighting for it (unless of course we all return to Toledo, Cordoba , Baghdad, Teheran and the rest of the Jewish Diaspora and establish utopian autonomies!) I doubt that Spanish, French or Italian people would give up their language and culture! Would they accept a kind of multi nationalism that will annihilate their uniqueness? Probably not! The Palestinian Arabs, specifically the inhabitants of the historic 7th century "greater Syria" which controlled today's Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Kuwait, Cyprus and parts of turkey, have always considered themselves a part of the great Arab nation and the Muslim world (which currently numbers 1.5 billion people in general and 22 Arab league states ). This alone demonstrates that their culture, religion and language are not and were never threatened. 

The bottom line is: although the first two arguments hold true for both sides, the symmetry between the Jewish and Palestinian claims breaks down as soon as one depart from the “indigenous” and the “national awareness” arguments. This asymmetry is why Bi-nationalism is not the answer, at least not for the Jews.
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Q: Israel has just turned 60, but there is still no consensus on its history, on what happened in 1948 with the Palestinians, whether there was or not a premeditated expulsion. Is peace possible without a historical consensus, without a reconciliation with the other?

Noa: The problem does not seem to be one of reaching a consensus on the history of the conflict since it basically exists. Here is the short version: The Arabs, Alienated by the" young Turks' " secular inclinations, revolted against the ottomans and sided with Britain. Then, in the aftermath of WWI, they found themselves misled and cheated by the British and French. Soon the Middle East was torn to pieces rushing towards fractured nationalism. Jordan was given to the Hashemite dynasty. The Palestinians felt left aside while The Jews looked forward to a commonwealth type national homeland fostered by the British Empire. Add to that good old dash of anti-Semitism, Pogroms, persecution and the holocaust and you get a winning recipe for frustration, suspicion, hatred and brutal violence spiced with a sense of absolute justice on both sides.

Anyone can dive into endless pages on the web and find it out for themselves. But this would not solve the problem. The premeditated expulsion and annihilation of the Jewish presence in Palestine was openly declared by Palestinian and Arab leadership. It was met with armed resistance. Unfortunately war is barbaric and ugly: expulsion met with expulsion and killings met with revenge operations. Atrocities are the monstrous children of war. They should never be justified or compared in service of cheap propaganda! Otherwise mountains of horrors will pile up. The Jewish tradition says that saving one soul amounts to saving the whole world. In the same manner I believe that one soul taken amounts to the massacre of all humanity. Brutality is inexcusable. Yet honour and Justice only bring more bloodshed as they have always done, because they are regarded holier and more important then life itself! We should study the past in order to realise how important it is to bury it! Then we must look into the eyes of our children, reach out our hand in peace and walk towards a better future. 


Q: In the song that gives the name to your last album, “Genes and Jeans”, the protagonist is debate between change and the pertinence of a tradition. Surely this is a reflection of your own life, the way you are.

-In fact, especially since the fall of the Berlin wall, it seems as if the whole world is debating between modernity and tradition. The problem is that the debate is very violent. Some –fundamentalists of all types- want to go back to tradition by using the force of weapons. Others want to impose modernity, democracy –they say- through war. Are we in a clash of civilisations or, as Tareq Ali says, in a clash of fundamentalism?

Noa: “Civilizations” seems to be too big a term. It is rather a clash between oppressive regimes and free societies.

Q: Do you think that the West is really interested in the Arab-Muslim world becoming democratised, or do you fear that a democratisation of these countries would make them stronger in the defence of their own interests?

Noa: I do not know about the "west". I personally am extremely interested in the Arab Muslim world becoming democratised and many individuals in the so called "west" share this interest. I have no fear. People should be allowed to defend their interests, hopefully in peaceful ways, and it is our duty as existing democracies to meet their efforts with empathy and willingness to help.

Q: How can the dialogue, the proximity between the East and the West be recomposed?

Noa: A dialogue, as indirect as it may seem, is always going on. This interview seems to be a good example of one. The question is: who is who?


Q: I have read on your website an open letter that you wrote in the summer of 2006 in the middle of the war between the Hezbollah and Israel. You use very strong words against the Islamist Shiites. They started that war, but I was working in Lebanon and I can assure you that the Israeli response was of a violence completely disproportionate. This is backed up by reports made by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. I have the feeling that one of the greatest problems for dialogue is the lack of respect for the pain of others. Many Arabs deny the Holocaust, they were happy about the 11th September terrorist attacks, true, but many more Israelis and Westerners ignore the historical injury that colonialism and imperialism caused in the region. Wrongs that have also resulted in the death of hundreds, maybe millions of deaths. The latest example is very recent: the war in Iraq. Maybe the dialogue between civilisations ought to start by establishing an interpretation of history agreed upon by consensus?

Noa: I hope people will always empathize with the pain and suffering of others! As for proportions and disproportions: 
I believe proportions should be judged relative to intentions.
The openly declared intention of the Hezbollah was and is to destroy and eliminate Israel. This was demonstrated, in part, by their random bombing of civilians in our country, including an area right nearby my home, where no military installation has ever existed to the best of my knowledge. What exactly are the ‘right’ proportions for fighting that??especially in light of the Hezobllah’s questionable habit of placing their most deadly instruments of war and headquarters cruelly and cynically in the midst of the densest, poorest, most defenceless civilian populations. 
Israel’s only claim has ever been the recognition of its right to exist where it does, on the Jewish people’s promised land. 
It also agreed to several British plans of land-sharing with the Palestinians which were very problematic for Israel, just for the sake of claiming stake to any part of the land. This was always greeted with refusal and violence from the other side.
Israel was always willing to accept any agreement which integrated the rights of the Arab population within its borders. Proof: 1.5 million Arabs live in Israel as full-fledged citizens, in a country whose population is 7 million! That is 20 percent of our population! Is there anything parallel or even remotely similar in any Arab country? 
Israel has never denied the legitimacy of any of her neighbours, from Jordan to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc, all conceived in that same aftermath of WWI. This attitude was never reciprocated, as i’ve stated before, even after millions of jews were brutally butchered in the holocaust. 
The right measure of military response to an attack, as i see it, is one that will prove just enough to put an end to the aggression, unless you expect Israel to be a pacifist nation saying that if it is Allahs will that we all perish, so be it. Obviously that is not the case. Israel’s response did not stop the violence, on the contrary. So, maybe it was not strong enough?

Finally, my view is that all violence is disproportionate and should be avoided by both sides. But, given no choice, i will be the first to fight violently to protect the lives of my children and loved ones were they threatened. And i am sure everyone here would do exactly the same. 


Q: To finish then. Given the hegemony exercised by the United States in international politics, what perspectives will be opened in the Middle East with a victory, in November, by Barack 
Obama? 

Noa: We should always be hopeful and use whatever pretext to advance peace and dialogue.
On the subject of hope: I don’t think we could ask for a greater example of hope than the transition the American People have made in only 50 years from leaving blacks dangling from the trees to possibly electing one as their president. This dynamic is only possible in a free, democratic society. It is for this reason that we can only wish that kind of transformation for all of our neighbours in the middle east, and any other country burdened with an oppressive, non-democratic regime.

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