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South
African author, Nadine Gordimer, who recieved the Nobel Prize for
Literature, is scheduled to attend the first annual International
Writers' Festival in Jerusalem.
For More information about the first annual International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, click here.
Ms. Nadine Gordimer
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho
Square
London W1D 3QY 17 April 2008
Dear Ms. Gordimer,
It is very seldom that I write to
famous personalities to express my admiration for their work and
accomplishments. Indeed, it takes much
courage to write to a gifted and famous writer when one has not completed
university studies but concentrated instead on those of music and dance. It is my current work and interest in human
rights and peace activities which has motivated me to write to you today.
I have long been an admirer of your
writing and your position against apartheid and was thrilled when you won the
Nobel Prize for Literature.
It has been brought to my attention
that you will be taking part, with many other writers, in the first
International Writers’ Festival in Jerusalem
in May. This Festival almost coincides
with Israel’s
official celebrations of the founding of the State.
You are certainly aware of the
massive human rights violations which are being committed every day by the
State of Israel, which claims to speak and act for all Jews, and the apartheid
system which has been constructed on Palestinian land by the Israeli Government
as the occupying power. Numerous human
rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights and
Human Rights Watch, among others, human rights experts, such as John Dugard and
Jean Ziegler, clergymen such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, politicians such as Nelson
Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and Ronnie
Kasrils, have condemned Israel’s human rights offences, such as administrative
detention, targeted killings, land confiscation, demolition of houses and
collective punishment of an entire indigenous population of over 3,500,000
people. These actions have taken place
for decades; the latest, and perhaps most horrendous action, is Israel’s siege
on the Gaza Strip, which is causing an enormous humanitarian disaster and death. It is collective punishment of 1,500,000
people, half of which are children and youth.
Several Israeli artists have refused
to take part in celebrations this year because of Palestinian suffering and Israel’s military
occupation such as the poet, Aharon Shabtai, and the conductor and pianist, Daniel
Barenboim. Other artists, such as the
British artist, Banksy, who painted the apartheid wall surrounding Bethlehem, the violinist, Nigel Kennedy, and the filmmaker
and director, Ken Loach, have also condemned the practices which are being
carried out in the Occupied
Territories. Some, such as Ken Loach and Nigel Kennedy,
have boycotted Israel.
I am sending with this letter Ronnie
Kasril’s recent article on Deir Yassin, which took place 60 years ago during Al
Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, which was, of course, the expulsion and
murder of over 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of approximately 531
villages in historic Palestine.
It is for this reason that I am
writing to you to appeal to you to either refuse to take part in a Festival
held in Jerusalem, where the Palestinian population is discriminated against
and slowly being ethnically cleansed, which is part of the illegally Occupied West
Bank, where there are 8 meter walls and fences of barbed wire, hundreds of checkpoints
and apartheid roads separating Jews from non-Jews, or, if you do attend, to
make a strong statement of condemnation against such policies, which are
strongly reminiscent of others which have in the past received world
condemnation. As a human rights
activist, I, too, believe that it is unbelievable that a State which is
committing such crimes should be honoured as if its behaviour were moral and
ethical. As a Jew, I am deeply ashamed,
shocked, and very saddened, as well.
I will close this letter with the
title of Primo Levi’s great book, “If not now, when?”
Yours sincerely,
Paula Abrams-Hourani
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the
Middle East (Austria)
Women in Black (Vienna)
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