McEwan’s speech vindicates his anti-boycott stance
Accepting the Jerusalem prize for literature last night, novelist Ian McEwan attacked Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. His audience, which included President Shimon Peres, Culture Minister Limor Livnat and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat, listened in what the Israeli paper Haaretz described as “polite but tense silence.”
McEwan described “a strand of nihilism which is closing off the future here…Hamas has embraced the nihilism of the suicide bomber… (but it is also)… nihilism to make a long-term prison camp of the Gaza Strip. Nihilism has unleashed a tsunami of concrete across the occupied territories.”
In particular, he condemned the “continued evictions and relentless purchases of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the process of the right of return granted to Jews but not to Arabs, the so-called facts on the ground of hardening concrete over the future, over future generationsof Palestinian and Israeli children who will inherit the conflict and find it even more difficult to resolve than it is today.”
Two days earlier, McEwan had joined Israeli author David Grossman and other peace activists at the weekly protest in Sheikh Jarrah, an area of East Jerusalem where Jewish settlers have been evicting Palestinians. After that event he said, “The welcome I had from various strands of the Israeli peace movement completely vindicated my decision to come. They feel the tide is running against them. I feel it’s very important to support that important hope and conscience. It was very stirring.”
In Britain, McEwan had been subjected to a well-publicised campaign demanding that he refuse the prize and boycott the event. The organisers, calling themselves ‘British Writers in Support of Palestine’, are part of the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement’, which thinks that Israel is an “apartheid state” and opposes any contact whatsoever with Israeli institutions or individuals, regardless of the politics of those institutions and individuals. One of their supporters, Dr Mona Baker, once sacked two people from their jobs soley on the grounds that they were Israeli citizens. But most of these people are probably not anti-semites who wish to see the destruction of the state of Israel so much as well-meaning but politically ignorant people who want to publicise the fact that they’re on the side of the Palestinians.
McEwan had already answered these people in a powerful reply in their organ of choice, the Guardian. His speech and actions in Jerusalem last week simply went to prove, once and for all, how right he was to choose to help the Israeli peace movement and the Palestinian cause rather than make a futile, counter-productive gesture.
skidmarx said,
February 21, 2011 at 5:09 pm
You say “vindicate”, others might go for “mitigate”.
anti-semites who wish to see the destruction of the state of Israel
A politically ignorant, futile and counter-productive mangling of the language.
maxdunbar said,
February 21, 2011 at 8:24 pm
The whole speech is here
http://www.rcwlitagency.com/news.aspx
Sarah AB said,
February 21, 2011 at 9:39 pm
I am strongly opposed to an academic boycott of Israel, but think it is perhaps worth pointing out (as the use of the word ‘jobs’ is a little ambiguous) that as far as I know Mona Baker only ‘sacked’ people from unpaid roles on the editorial board of a journal.
skidmarx said,
February 22, 2011 at 11:03 am
Conversely it did make the think that this particular action was at individuals rather than institutions, even though presumably the justification was that their actual jobs were at Israeli institutions.
sackcloth and ashes said,
February 21, 2011 at 9:45 pm
‘You say “vindicate”, others might go for “mitigate”’.
You also endorse Rwandan genocide denial, you little turd.
http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/nocide-denial-here-we-go-again/#comment-32289
skidmarx said,
February 22, 2011 at 11:13 am
There you go again, as Reagan said to Carter. It’s a lie, you know it’s a lie, and it is is hypocritical for Jim Denham to allow you to post such libellous material here, particularly when you’re only doing it to be offensive, when he bans David Ellis for disagreeing with him.
From the post – well-meaning but politically ignorant people Reminds me of Saif Gaddafi’s classification of the protestors in Libya:there were some trade unionists, and they had their grievances, there were Islamists, and they’re really bad, and then there were people who just went out into the street to see what was going on. This patronising attitude is the flipside of the invention of “political anti-semitism” to explain opposition to Israel – you’re not so far off your trolley that you want to accuse so many people of being racists, so you settle for claiming they don’t understand what they’re doing. Dumbass.
sackcloth and ashes said,
February 22, 2011 at 11:49 am
Skidmark on 13th July 2010:
‘Christian Davenport deosn’t (sic) appear to deny there was a genocide:
The genocide caused, by their (sic) estimate, 100,000 of a total of 1 million deaths
But then that wouldn’t fit your agenda of claiming that anti-imperialists are all David Irving clones’.
Do you agree with Davenport (as you imply here), or not?
On 14th July 2010.
‘As it happens I used to buy into the RPF view of the events in Rwanda. Even after reading a couple of well-written articles at the Tomb last year I still tended to think that the genocide should give Kagame and co. a lot of leeway. But the weakness of the argument put forward here and its support makes me think that the other view was right all along’.
What exactly is the ‘RPF view of events in Rwanda’? And when you say ‘the other view was right all along’, exactly what are you referring too, if not the attempts by Davenport, Philpot et al to discredit established accounts of the Rwandan genocide?
I don’t expect you to clarify your views, or give me an honest answer, but I’m yet again giving you a chance to put the record straight – if you’ve got the guts to do so.
jim denham said,
February 22, 2011 at 11:51 am
Skidders: I did *not* ban David Ellis for “disagreeing” with me: plenty of people on this blog (including you) do that. I banned him for crossing the line into slanderous/libellous abuse that contributed nothing to worthwhile debate.
Sarah AB: you may well be correct that the people Mona Baker sacked were unpaid: but can you imagine it being considered acceptable on the liberal/left to treat people other than Israelis (paid or unpaid) in that way *soley because of their nationality*? Even more sinister was Baker’s claim that she had acted as a “private citizen” in taking this action. One of the people she sacked replies here:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=174550
skidmarx said,
February 22, 2011 at 3:57 pm
I banned him for crossing the line into slanderous/libelous abuse that contributed nothing to worthwhile debate.
Which is sackcloth & ashes’ stock-in-trade. Why is he still here?
sackcloth and ashes said,
February 22, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Instead of hysterical and deceitful accusations of libel, skidmark, why don’t you actually answer my questions?
skidmarx said,
February 22, 2011 at 4:59 pm
It’s not “hysterical and deceitful”, it’s the truth something you have a hard time recognising. The accusation that I’m a genocide denier was a lie the first time, and its been a lie ever since. As made clear on this thread {though clearer before some of your abusive comments were removed], you’re not interested in the answer to your question, you’re just a troll that wants to try and wind people up by coming out with the same bullshit whatever the thread. It would be a think to wonder about that Jim Denham tolerates you, but obviously he doesn’t mind you helping to turn this into an offshoot of Harrry’s Place at its worst. I tried responding to your crap numerous times at HP, now perhaps I should just treat it as the serious libel that it is.
Sarah AB said,
February 22, 2011 at 2:18 pm
I completely agree – and I assure you my nitpicking was driven by pedantry rather than politics! The Times Higher link was interesting.
Dr Paul said,
February 22, 2011 at 4:31 pm
I recall that Paul Simon got into trouble with the Anti-Apartheid people when he had black South African musicians on one of his albums, on the grounds that this transgressed the cultural boycott of South Africa. Some people argued that Simon did more to help black South Africans this way, by bringing their music to a broad Western audience, than the boycotters.
In the early 1920s, the German Communist Party entered into public debates with hard-line German nationalists, including fascists, in order to draw away their working-class and peasant supporters. The nationalists broke off the debates, because the communists kept winning the arguments.
Blanket boycotts and ‘no platform’ actions tend to be blunt instruments, and can hinder as well as help those whom they are intended to assist.
Engagements with political enemies is always a risky business. Sometimes blanket boycotts and ‘no platform’ actions are the best way; sometimes it’s worth taking our arguments into the enemy camp. It’s a tactical question, not one of principle.
sackcloth and ashes said,
February 22, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Skidmark, I pressed you to clarify your views on Rwandan genocide denial – and on Christian Davenport’s scholarship – throughout this thread:
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2011/01/ideas-meme-sackcloth-and-ashes.html
I asked you a simple question repeatedly. All it required was a ‘Yes, I think Davenport’s account of Rwanda 1994 is correct and his critics are either misinformed or are liars’, or ‘No, I think he’s a genocide denier and I regard his views with contempt’.
But instead you preferred to rant about being misrepresented, scream about being libelled, whilst avoiding giving a straight-forward answer. How can you have the gall to accuse anyone of representing your opinions accurately, when you lack the guts to give a straight answer?
So I’ll say it again. Is Davenport’s version of events right or wrong? Is he distorting the historical truth, or is this what you believe that this applies to the likes of des Forges, Prunier, Gourevitch et al?
Do us all a favour, and front up.
SteveH said,
February 24, 2011 at 5:32 pm
I say lets try a boycott. Nothing else has worked.
McEwan is a typical imperialist apologist, his speech was a joke. He blamed the religious right for whatever he thinks is the problem in the region, which clearly to him isn’t the decades long injustice against the Palestinians! Fuck him.
charliethechulo said,
February 24, 2011 at 6:38 pm
More reasoned argument from SteveH, I see.
SteveH said,
February 24, 2011 at 7:43 pm
It’s Charliechuchutrain, the person who doesn’t think women wearing headscarves should be engaged in political action. The irony, the irony!
charliethechulo said,
February 24, 2011 at 7:52 pm
“the person who doesn’t think women wearing headscarves should be engaged in political action”: learn to read, Steve. I have never said or written that or anything that could rationally be interpreted as meaning that. And I defy you to find such a quote (I think I know the statement you have in mind, which (a) wasn’t by me, and (b) doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means). You’re either illiterate, incapable of rational thought, hysterical, dishonest, or (most likely), all of the above.
sackcloth and ashes said,
February 24, 2011 at 8:21 pm
‘I say lets try a boycott. Nothing else has worked’.
Oh, you’d be well up for that, wouldn’t you Steve? Just your cup of tea …
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/ww2-pix/boycott1a.jpg
charliethechulo said,
February 26, 2011 at 1:33 am
Me: ” I have never said or written that or anything that could rationally be interpreted as meaning that”
SteveH: silence.