by Michael Curtis
Those
writers who signed the letter, who are not automatically haters of
Israel, should be ashamed of themselves, not only for their endorsement
of the extreme Palestinian hostility to Israel, but also for their
refusal to examine the reality of Israeli life.
It
is troubling that almost anything still goes. Good authors who once
knew better have again succumbed to bigotry of Palestinian pressure
groups against Israel. A number of them are now endorsing attempts by
those groups to prevent better words emerging from anyone connected with
the State of Israel.
The
unseemly petition by these writers to deny free speech was made known
in a message, published on April 5, 2016, that was sent by the pro-BDS
organization Adalah-NY, the NY campaign for the boycott of Israel, 11
“anti-racist” organizations, and more than 100 writers to the PEN
American Center. The Center is holding its World Voices Festival in New
York City for the week from April 25-May 1, 2016. The letter demanded
that PEN “reject… the Israeli Embassy.”
The
signatories to the letter were acting in a manner incompatible to the
very principles of PEN and of any writer truly engaged in promoting
dialogue. PEN American Center was created in 1922 to promote literature
and support literary fellowship. It calls itself “the U.S. branch of the
world’s leading international literary and human rights organization.”
The
onslaught of those writers who automatically endorse the Palestinian
Narrative of Victimhood and the efforts, in one way or another, to
prevent or limit free speech by Israelis and their ability to
participate in rational exchange of views, never stops. To their
disgrace, the usual suspects and more than 100 writers including
Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker, Richard Ford, and Junot Diaz, are
guilty of this.
Moreover,
the letter itself is hypocritical. The writers pretend their action is
not a “call to boycott individual Israelis,” but instead, using weird,
disingenuous, and meaningless language, that it is a call “not to
partner with the Israel government or other complicit (sic)
institutions.” In itself, the letter is a gross insult to those
independent Israeli writers who may participate in the Festival and are
implicitly accused of and assumed guilty of “complicity.”
One of the prominent persons who signed the letter is Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple.
She has long been well-known, indeed renowned, for her automatic
antagonism and critical view of Israel. Now, in this total irrelevant
animus against Israel she complains of the failure of PEN to stand up
for “Palestinian writers, academics, and students who are suffering
under a repressive Israeli regime that denies their right to freedom of
expression.”
The
real question is whether by using this extreme rhetoric Walker is,
deliberately or unknowingly, trying to prevent a peaceful dialogue
between the State of Israel and Palestinians. If so, she must be held
accountable for a divisive and reactionary point of view opposing the
development of Palestinians, as well as falsely denouncing Israel as a
“racist” state.
Among
others who have supported Palestinian bigotry is Angela Davis. Her
problem, and therefore that of the letter, is that she has no
credentials to speak for the “suffering.” Even her leftist fellow
travelers might remember that she endorsed the imprisonment of Communist
political dissidents in 1968, and was awarded the International Peace
Prize by Communist East Germany. The most devastating comment on the
real Davis came from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the real sufferer in Soviet
Gulags, in his remarkable Voice of Freedom speech to the AFL-CIO in
Washington, D.C. on July 9, 1975.
Solzhenitsyn
in his bitter criticism declared that in the Soviet press emphasized
the “suffering” of Davis as if she were the only person in the world who
was suffering, and that little Soviet schoolchildren were told to write
petitions in defense of her. However, when Davis was asked by Soviet
and Czech political dissidents to help their friends in jail she
refused. Her shocking, inhumane answer, one that should be remembered by
the present writers and by PEN, was “They deserve what they get. Let
them remain in prison.”
Many
of the people who signed the letter are writers of fiction but their
flights of fancy has led them to the fantasy that Israel as always is
engaged in a vast international conspiracy regarding the Festival. The
PEN Festival has listed 15 agencies, starting with the Ford Foundation,
as sponsors: Israel is not one of them. But Israel is mentioned, among a
number of others, as one of the “Champions” of the Festival. Of course,
for them Israel is engaged in conspiracy by the high crime of
sponsoring one literary panel in the Festival, one dealing with freedom
from torture. But it is only partly guilty because the other culprits
also in it are the French Embassy and OR books.
The
fact is that the [sic] Israel made a small contribution to help pay the costs
of airfare, hotel, and interpreters for individual Israeli writers who
are participating in the festival. Israel is one of the 14 agencies,
including France, Germany and Poland, supporting individual authors.
Those
writers who signed the letter, who are not automatically haters of
Israel, should be ashamed of themselves, not only for their endorsement
of the extreme Palestinian hostility to Israel, but also for their
refusal to examine the reality of Israeli life.
Instead
of taking part in machinations designed to denying free speech to
Israelis they should be addressing a real problem, dramatically revealed
in a report in April, about the perpetrators of crime in Israel.
On
April 10. 2016, the Israeli government introduced a plan to deal with
crime in the Arab communities in Israel. The Arab population, Muslims,
Christians, Druze, and Circassian communities amount to almost a quarter
of the Israel population. About 60 per cent of the murders in Israel
take place in Arab communities, as well as 47 per cent of robberies, and
32 per cent of reported property crime. Since 2000, about 1,100 Arabs
have been murdered by other Israeli Arabs, a yearly average of 70
victims of Arab-on-Arab murders.
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recognizing a real problem, has called for
equality in law enforcement along with more police to serve Arab
communities. In a forthright comment, he declared the intention to
reduce other gaps in Israeli society at large and particularly in
Israeli Arab society concerning housing, education, employment, and
transportation.
Is
it too much to suggest that the 100 and more writers of the letter to
PEN might listen to and benefit from Netanyahu’s effort to reform and
also from recent harsh criticism of the Saudi Arabian TV anchor, Nadine
Al-Budair? The anchor said that it is time for Muslims to own up to
elements of their faith that encourage followers to commit terrorist
attacks.
It
is certainly time for those not committed to a lifetime devoted to
warfare, physically or otherwise, against Israel to recognize they have
been led into an abyss of hatred of Israel by those dedicated to its
destruction. Like the authorities of PEN they should not succumb to the
hatred.
Michael Curtis
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/the_pen_festival_and_bigotry_against_israel.html
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
