Israeli backing for New York festival rejected in angry letter by authors

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Israeli backing for New York festival rejected in angry letter by authors

PEN American Center provokes fury of its own members
over ‘promotion of government that denies human rights’

Sian Cain
Wednesday 6 April 2016 22.05 BST

More than 100 writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker, Richard Ford and Junot Díaz, have called on the PEN American Center “to reject support from the embassy of Israel” in a furious open letter.

Sent to PEN American Center and other festival participants in March but published online on Wednesday, the letter opposes the Israeli embassy’s sponsorship of PEN’s annual World Voices Festival (PWVF), a seven-day event in New York at the end of this month.

In the festival’s promotional materials, PEN America lists the Israeli embassy as a “champion” of the festival, one of the tiers of festival involvement, and a sponsor of theNinety Minutes, Three Minds panel discussion involving Ethiopian-born Israeli author Dalia Betolin-Sherman.

“It is deeply regrettable that the festival has chosen to accept sponsorship from the Israeli government, even as it intensifies its decades-long denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people, including the frequent targeting of Palestinian writers and journalists,” says the letter, sent by Adalah-NY, The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, an American group that campaigns for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/06/israeli-backing-for-new-york-festival-rejected-in-angry-letter-by-authors

[King_David]

1. The Jewish State drives these people crazy

Because it's really, really the worst in the neighborhood.

As usual Jews are not allowed to live among the gen pop and nor are we allowed a Jewish area to live in either.

[Little Tich]

2. I think the call for rejecting support from the Embassy of Israel is wrong.

Unless there's an apparent link to any wrongdoing, I can't see any reason for protesting Israeli involvement. However, if Israel sent a racist like Dani Dayan to attend, there would be a good enough reason IMHO for rejecting Israeli support.