[Reader-list] Tariq Ali on Turin Book Fair

[OISHIK SIRCAR]

 Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair
by TARIQ ALI

When I agreed to participate in the Turin Book Fair, which I have
done before, I had no idea that the 'guest of honour' was Israel and
its 60th birthday. But this is also the 60th anniversary of what the
Palestinian call the 'nakba'the disaster that befell them that year,
when they were expelled from their villages, some killed, women raped
by the settlers. These facts are no longer disputed. So why did the
Turin Book Fair not invite Palestinians in equal numbers? 30 Israeli
writers and 30 Palestinian writers (and I promise you they exist and
are very fine poets and novelists) might have been seen as a positive
and peaceful gesture and a positive debate might have taken place. A
literary version of Daniel Barenboim's Diwan Orchestra, half-Israeli,
half-Palestinian. Such a move would have brought people together, but
no. The cultural commissars know best. I have argued vigorously with
some of the Israeli writers visiting the fair on other occasions and
would have happily done the same again if conditions had been
different. What they decided to do is an ugly provocation.

http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq02052008.html

-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

Scholar in Women's Rights
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

60 Harbord Street
Room 016 B
Toronto, ON M5S 3L1

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca

416.876.7926