Israeli rightist writer and war crimes advocate to visit Dublin

international | miscellaneous | news report Monday May 29, 2006 11:09 by David L - ipsc

To coincide with the anniversary of the 6 Day war and their expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians, the Israeli government is sponsoring the writer A.B. Yehoshua to tour the British Isles. On Tuesday, June 6th he is arriving in Dublin. Here, disgracefully, the Irish Writer’s Centre on Parnell Street has provided a venue for this deeply controversial writer and his official Israeli backers.

We will use total force. Because from the minute we withdraw I don't want to
know their names. I don't want any personal relations with them... We shall use
force against an entire population. We shall use total force. It will be a
totally different war. It will be much harder on the Palestinians.
(The writer A.B. Yehoshua advocating the targeting of Palestinian civilians – Ha’aretz interview 18.3.04)

To coincide with the anniversary of the 6 Day war and their expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians, the Israeli government is sponsoring the writer A.B. Yehoshua to tour the British Isles. On Monday, June 6th he is arriving in Dublin. Here, disgracefully, the Irish Writer’s Centre on Parnell Street has provided a venue for this deeply controversial writer and his official Israeli backers.

Palestinian writers banned from travelling
Lest it be argued that the Israeli government only wants to spread a love of literature by sponsoring this event, it is useful to remember their treatment of two Palestinian poets from Ramallah, Zakaria Mohammed and Ghassan Zaqtan who were due to take part in a poetry evening in Ireland in November 2002. They never arrived. Zakaria Mohammed was prevented from travelling by the Israeli government and Ghassan Zaqtan was advised by the Jordanians that if he travelled abroad the Israelis might prevent him from returning home.

A more plausible reason for the Israeli government bringing this staunchly nationalist Israeli writer to Ireland is their need to portray themselves as a bastion of culture, thereby justifying their occupation as a war of civilisation against primitive fanatical Palestinians. This provides a mask behind which they can then proceed with their land seizures, mass imprisonments and starvation policies through which they hope to solve their ‘Palestinian demographic problem.’ As such it comprises the other side of the coin of their attacks on Palestinian writers and cultural centres.

By agreeing to cosponsor and to advertise this event, the Irish Writers Centre, part funded by the Irish government, is aiding Israel to construct its mask of civilisation and is legitimising the Israeli government’s denial of basic freedoms to Palestinian writers, which amounts to a system of effective censorship.

Advocate of War Crimes
In addition, Yehoshua holds deeply disturbing views. His narrow nationalist beliefs are not merely vented against Palestinians but also against Jews living in the Diaspora, who he attacked in a Ha’aretz interview in 2004 as being partly responsible for the Holocaust. He recently – again in Ha’aretz – castigated American Jews and indeed all Jews who don’t live in Israel for not being properly Jewish, quoting with approval Jabotinsky’s chilling dictum: ‘Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you’.

This pales in comparison with his attitude towards Palestinians. Here, despite his depiction as an Israeli ‘leftist’, he has demanded that illegal Israeli settlements be annexed and that the Palestinian territories be walled off. In fact, the Palestinian ghetto he advocates is even smaller than the one which the present annexation Wall (condemned by the International Court
of Justice) allows them. Should Palestinians fight against being encased in such bantustans, he has notoriously advocated a terrorist war against civilians – similar, in fact to the one Israel is now conducting:

[A]fter we remove the settlements and after we stop being an occupation army, all the rules of war will be different. We will exercise our full force. We will not have to run around looking for this terrorist or that instigator--we will make use of force against an entire population. We will use total force. Because from the minute we withdraw I don't want to know their names. I don't want any personal relations with them. I am no longer in a situation of occupation and policing and B'Tselem [the human rights organization]. Instead, I will be standing opposite them in a position of nation versus nation. State versus state. I am not going to perpetrate war crimes for their own sake, but I will use all my force against them. If there is shooting at Ashkelon, there is no electricity in Gaza. We shall use force against an entire population. We shall use total force It will be a totally different war. It will be much harder on the Palestinians. If they shoot Qassam missiles at Ashkelon, we will cut electricity to Gaza. We shall cut communications in Gaza. We shall prevent fuel from Gaza. We shall use our full force as we did on the Egyptian (Suez) Canal in 1969. And then, when the Palestinian suffering will be totally different, much more serious, they will, by themselves, eliminate the terror.
(From "A nation that knows no bounds", Ha'aretz weekend magazine, an interview with A. B. Yehoshua, 18.3.2004).

Alternative Event Planned
The Irish Palestine Solidarity campaign has called upon the Irish Writers Centre to cancel this event. In a letter to the IWC, IPSC chairperson Jim Bowen argued ‘The task of serious writers is to speak truth to power. If the IWC allows the above event to proceed, it will fail in this duty; instead, it will help Israeli state power to obscure the horrific truth about the crimes against International Law and International Humanitarian Law that Israel is inflicting on the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.’

Should the IWC continue in their arrangement to give ‘aid and comfort’ to the Israeli government’s system of cultural apartheid and censorship, it is planned to hold an alternative event on the night of June 6th, which will include readings of Palestinian poetry. The IPSC is also hoping to bring the noted Israeli writer, editor and anti-racist activist, Yitzhak Laor, to Dublin to participate in this event