Facing widespread pressure, Nadine Gordimer may pull out of Israel writers meet

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By David B. Green, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags:

South African writer Nadine Gordimer may pull out of her appearance next month at Jerusalem's International Writers Festival in the face of a widespread campaign pressuring her to cancel.

The 84-year-old Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, is scheduled to make three appearances at the festival, which runs at Mishkenot Sha'ananim May 11-15.

Other writers slated to attend include Americans Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Russell Banks, as well as Israelis David Grossman and Amos Oz, the latter of whom is scheduled to share the stage with Gordimer on May 12.
Advertisement

"I am dealing with the issue now," Gordimer told Haaretz in a telephone conversation from her home in Johannesburg on Friday. She refused to comment further on the controversy, except to say she would soon make a public statement on her decision.

Gordimer has received dozens of appeals, many of them posted on-line, calling on her to join a cultural boycott of Israel.

Gordimer, who is Jewish, has long been identified with left-wing causes, including her longtime backing of the African National Congress dating back to the apartheid period, when the black liberation movement was outlawed. In 2001, she publicly urged her friend Susan Sontag not to come to Jerusalem, where the late American writer was to be honored with the Jerusalem Prize at the capital's biennial international book fair. Sontag did come in the end, and received the literary award in person.

Now it is Gordimer who is being pressed to stay away from Israel. For example an open letter earlier this month signed by British professors Hilary and Steven Rose, who have led the Jewish lobby in the U.K. campaigning for a boycott of Israeli academia, implored her not to "give the Israeli establishment, the Israeli press, the whole Israeli PR machine, the prize they want - your apparent condoning of their policies."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978039.html

[ProgressiveMuslim]

1. Stay home Nadine! Don't put your stamp of approval on Israel's apartheid! nt

[Shaktimaan]

10. question

You have consistently criticized Israeli policies which punish all of Palestine for the actions of "a few." (Meaning their elected government and terrorist organizations.) How is it that you can condemn Israel for doing this while supporting a movement that seeks to apply the exact same methodology to Israel? ie: Only if we pressure all Israelis will they finally force their government to change.

How would you react if there was a movement to deny Palestinian academics of all political persuasions from visiting or speaking at universities because of Hamas' actions? Can you explain why you see sanctions against Palestine to be illegal collective punishment while sanctions against Israel are something to be lauded?

[azurnoir]

2. If Ms Gordimer desides to go

Perhaps she can circumvent putting a stamp of approval on Apartheid by what she says during her appearances, statements made in that arena could have an impact also.

The problem I have with the cultural boycott is that the ones most directly affected are for the most part themselves "leftists", thus giving Israel's right wing a chance to once again play victim publicly while "laughing in their sleeves" about the whole thing privately.

Now calling for a boycott of Israeli made high tech devices, software ect that could have across the board impact, the same goes for weapons but I will not hold my breath on that, someone is always willing to buy weapons.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

3. I'd like to see Isarel treated as the pariah nation it is... with boycotts of all sectors. nt

[oberliner]

4. Do you think that will hasten the creation of a Palestinian state?

It seems like more interactions, more conversations, more communication is the key to ending this conflict.

Every situation and every conflict is different. Historical analogies can be limiting as well as instructive.

What is the goal here and what is the best way to achieve that goal peacefully?

Is that not the essential question?

[Vegasaurus]

5. Sometimes I wonder

I read something yesterday in Atlantic Monthly:

“It does not matter what the Jews do. We will not let them have peace,” Ibrahim Mudeiris, the imam of the Ijlin Mosque in Gaza, told me not long ago. We spoke after Friday prayers. The street outside the mosque was crowded with angry young men who had been excited by Mudeiris’s sermon, in which he identified Jews as “the sons of apes and pigs.”

“They can be nice to us or they can kill us, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “If we have a cease-fire with the Jews, it is only so that we can prepare ourselves for the final battle.”

Peace with Israel, or peace with Jews, doesn't seem to be the plan.

Neverending war and violence is the national goal, or sadly, so it seems by the spokespersons in Gaza, both government and religious.

[notfullofit]

7. And of course

preaching that kind of mindset ensures never ending terrorism.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

6. It's the *only* way.

I've sat through 25 years of talk. The end result is exponential settlement expansion and total paralysis.

After 25 years of observing this conflict, my position has moved from "everyone is reasonable, and if enough reason prevails everyone will do the right thing..." to "the only language the gov't of Israel understands is the language of negative consequence."

I truly believe that communication is great, but the pain of being isolated politically, culturally, financial and academically is a far more effective motivator.


Oberliner, think about what you're really saying... that a perfect set of conditions has to be created, which will magically change the power structure in Israel. That will never happen. The occupation machien has a life of its own. It's going to require a total restructuring of political life in Israel to bring about that change. The occupation doesn't chug along because people are bad... it now has its own life. Do you really think that if Hamas just "quit" and Abu Mazen agreed to every outrageous demand of Israel, that there would be 2 viable states? You're dreaming.

[pelsar]

8. at the sametime..

resistance for "resistances sake"...or worse..resistance that causes a net negative result for the Palestinians (a honest review of the history shows what works and what doesnt)...is not only dumb...and not only far worse than stupid its selfish..its Palestinians punishing Palestinians for their egos to show that they are "resisting.....

attacking the fuel depots?... attacking the food trucks? the egyptians?... attacking sederot?......your not going to get your political, financial or academic boycott, israel is far to much of the western hi tech world for that to happen.

stuck in cycle based on "resistance' for resistance sake has only brought misery to the Palestinians...the only thing that is going to save them is themselves.....but i dont see that happening in the near future.....

[oberliner]

9. Nadine Gordimer defends decision to attend J'lem writers conference

South African writer Nadine Gordimer yesterday defended her decision to attend a writers conference in Israel next month. Saying that her "comrades" should have no doubts about her "solidarity with the struggle - our struggle - against apartheid," Gordimer noted that her invitation came not from the Israeli government but from Mishkenot Sha'ananim. About 15 foreign and 40 Israeli writers are expected to attend the mid-May five-day gathering.

The 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature laureate had been under enormous pressure at home and abroad to boycott the conference. Last weekend she said she decided to attend after arranging to meet with Palestinians as well as Israelis.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/979122.html

[LeftishBrit]

11. A good decision IMO

I think that 'arranging to meet with Palestinians as well as Israelis' is a far more valuable means of trying to change the status quo than a boycott.