EDITOR: The Empire lives on!
In a cynical and bigoted reaction to criticism, Ian McEwan has tried to square the political circle – to take the 30 pieces of silver from the Murderous regime, as well as to criticise the same people whose money he takes, and whose policies he supports by agreeing to deal with them in defiance of the many calls for him to do the decent thing and give up the prize. Like Margaret Atwood before him, he proves that avarice and the need for more fame and praise, by whatever means, is winning over humanity and morality with world-famous writers. Novelists they may be, moral figures they are not!
McEwan proves that he is a worthwhile sone of the British Empire, the power which created and complicated the conflict in Palestine, and acts as one who inherited and perfected the typical hypocrisy of the empire.
Ian McEwan to accept Israel book award but criticise occupation: The Guardian
Novelist defends his acceptance of prize after calls to reject it in protest at occupation of Palestinian territories
Harriet Sherwood in Tel Aviv
The novelist Ian McEwan will criticise Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land in his speech accepting the Jerusalem Prize for literature on Sunday evening, saying that the open and democratic nature of novels is antithetical to the government’s settlement policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
He will refer to “a strand of nihilism which is closing off the future here”, he told the Guardian shortly after his arrival in Israel for the ceremony. His attendance has drawn bitter criticism from supporters of the Palestinian cause.
The author took part in the weekly protest in Sheikh Jarrah, an area of East Jerusalem which has seen Jewish settlers evict Palestinian residents to take over their homes and establish hardline footholds in the Arab part of the city.
In the company of the celebrated Israeli author David Grossman, McEwan spoke to activists who told him they appreciated his presence. “The welcome I had from various strands of the Israeli peace movement completely vindicated my decision to come,” he said. “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.”
McEwan attempted to get close to the homes from which long-term Palestinian residents have been expelled by settlers but was prevented by Israeli security forces. “But I got a good sense of how Palestinian families are waiting to be evicted,” he said, adding they faced a “relentless tide”.
He said he intended to “make my own thoughts clear” when accepting the prize from Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, an enthusiastic advocate of expanding the Jewish presence in the east of the city.
East Jerusalem was occupied and later annexed by Israel in 1967 in a move illegal under international law and not recognised by most of the international community. Settlement building and expansion there has been a key issue blocking peace negotiations.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
McEwan said he planned to make further visits to East Jerusalem and the West Bank during his stay.
Earlier, at a press conference in Tel Aviv, the author described Israel as a “country with true democracy of opinion” and defended his decision to receive the award, saying it was “much more useful to come and engage and keep speaking” than to freeze out or boycott Israel over its occupation of the Palestinian territories.
“I am very conscious of being in a country with a true democracy of opinion,” he said. “I am perfectly aware that you cannot isolate [literature] but I take it as a bad sign when politics permeates every corner of life. I don’t feel I endorse every corner of Israel’s domestic or foreign policy … but I feel it’s right to engage with it.”
He said it was a great honour to be awarded the prize, to be presented at the opening of Jerusalem’s International Book Fair, pointing to past recipients as “writers and philosophers of such distinction”.
“Like most people, I want Israel to flourish. I’m very concerned that things have reached such a stalemate politically. It seems to me to be a rather depressing time politically to come here – but that makes it all the more urgent to keep talking.”
McEwan faced calls in the UK to reject the prize in protest at Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. In a letter to the Guardian last month, British Writers in Support of Palestine said the writer’s acceptance of an award in recognition of individual freedom in society was “a cruel joke and a propaganda tool for the Israeli state”.
The author responded at the time by saying that despite his opposition to illegal settlements, he was in favour of “dialogue, engagement, and looking for ways in which literature … can reach across political divides”. On Friday, he said it was a “fatal error to confuse people with their governments”.
He had spent the past few weeks “camped out in front of my television set” watching the pro-democracy protests in Egypt and other countries in the region.
He felt exhilarated by what he saw, and was struck by the swift collapse of the “social contract – how people feel bold enough to withdraw their consent. Crowds aren’t usually wise, but [the Egyptian protesters’] restraint under pressure was heroic.”
But he warned that “the story was still unfolding”. Referring to the bloody response of the Bahrain regime to protests, he said: “Egypt has raised the game for the tyrant – they know they’ve got to get in quick and hold everyone down.”
He added: “For every moment of exhilaration on the street, there is a Robespierre in waiting.”
He hoped the Israeli government would “welcome the spread of democracy rather than be too distrusting. Netanyahu said Israel must hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Hoping for the best is not enough, maybe [Israel] should be agitating for the best.”
Israel, he suggested, should harness its creativity in other spheres to the peace process. “Politics is too bunker. Israel needs to summon up the creative energy of its scientists, musicians, writers and artists and extend it into politics.”
He paid tribute to contemporary Israeli novelists such as Grossman, Amos Oz and AB Yehoshua, who “had made a huge impact around the world”.
McEwan declined to discuss his next novel, saying only it was “slightly more historical, meaning it’s set in 1972” than his latest book, Solar, about climate change.
He hoped the award of the Jerusalem prize was not a valedictory on his career, “especially as I’m half way through my next novel. I feel like Mrs Thatcher: I will go on and on.”
Prize controversies
The literary prize suggests a rarefied world, but it can also be a contentious one. Launched in 1996 to counter a perceived overlooking of women authors by existing literary awards, it was the Orange prize’s very raison d’être that attracted ire.
Amid widespread chuntering about it being discriminatory, Germaine Greer, pictured, complained that someone would soon found a prize for writers with red hair, while Auberon Waugh nicknamed it the Lemon prize. Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins wasn’t happy either. “The Orange prize is a blot on Britain’s literary landscape,” he wrote after its launch. In 2005 he expanded: “I’m amazed, frankly, that it’s lasted so long. It validates all those men in the Garrick who refuse to admit women.”
The Booker prizeThe pre-eminent book award, the Booker prize, has also had brushes with notoriety. In 1972 John Berger used his acceptance speech to trot out the usual platitudes,however, Berger insteadhe launch a stinging attack on the prize itself, drawing attention to the fact the sponsors, Booker McGonnall, had acquired much of their wealth from 130 years of trading in the Caribbean. “The modern poverty of the Caribbean is the direct result of this and similar exploitation,” he said. Berger donated half his £5,000 prize money to the Black Panthers – “the black movement with the socialist and revolutionary perspective that I find myself most in agreement with in this country”. Adam Gabbatt
EDITOR: The Arab Intifada is spreading beyond national borders!
While Mr. McEwan is busy doing important things in Israel, the Arab world is busy getting rid of its dictatorial regimes. In a historical swathe of unprecedented political action across the Middle East, in Yemen, Algeria, Bahrrain, Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, and now Libya. Despite the murderous treatment by the tyrant regimes, and the continued support by western government of these regimes, they are all tottering on the brink of collapse. Those who have written off the Arab masses as undemocratic fundamentalists, see their chicken coming home to roost. This new pan-Arabism is not one dictated and directed from above, but the genuine connection built between the oppressed across the region, all following in the wake and model of the first Palestinian Intifada – ‘peacefully, peacefully’!
It is always the regime which is not peaceful, which emlpoys thugs and criminals as part of its policing the rebelious population, which kills and tortures its own citizens. The west stands along and watches nervously as its favourite tyrants are swept away, not quite knowing how to react. Their continued support of the tyrants to their last gasp on the throne will not be easily forgotten, one assumes, once democratic governments are to be established in all countries.
Scores killed in Libya protests: Al Jazeera Online
Human Rights Watch says 84 people killed in past three days during rallies calling for ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.
19 Feb 2011
Crowds have taken to the streets in Libya demanding more representation and the overthrow of Gaddafi
Security forces in Libya have killed scores of pro-democracy protesters in demonstrations demanding the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s long time ruler.
Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that 84 people had died over the past three days.
A doctor in Benghazi told Al Jazeera that he had seen 70 bodies at the city’s hospital on Friday in one of the harshest crackdowns against peaceful protesters thus far.
“I have seen it on my own eyes: At least 70 bodies at the hospital,” said Wuwufaq al-Zuwail, a physician.
Al-Zuwail said that security forces had also prevented ambulances reaching the site of the protests.
The Libyan government has also blocked Al Jazeera TV signal in the country and people have also reported that the network’s website is inaccessible from there.
Protesters shot
Marchers mourning dead protesters in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, reportedly come under fire from security forces, as protests in the oil-exporting North African nation entered their fifth day on Friday.
Mohamed el-Berqawy, an engineer in Benghazi, told Al Jazeera that the city was the scene of a “massacre,” and that four demonstrators had been killed.
“Where is the United Nations … where is (US president Barack) Obama, where is the rest of the world, people are dying on the streets,” he said. “We are ready to die for our country.”
Verifying news from Libya has been difficult since protests began, thanks to restrictions on journalists entering the country, as well as internet and mobile phone black outs imposed by the government.
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters seeking to oust Gaddafi took to the streets across Libya on Thursday in what organisers called a “day of rage” modelled after similar protests in Tunisia and Egypt that ousted longtime leaders there. Gaddafi has ruled Libya since 1969.
Pro-government supporters also were out on the streets on Friday, according to the Libyan state television, which broadcasted images labelled “live” that showed men chanting slogans in support of Gaddafi.
The pro-Gaddafi crowd was seen singing as it surrounded his limousine as it crept along a road in the capital, Tripoli, packed with people carrying his portrait.
Deadly clashes
Deadly clashes broke out in several towns on Thursday after the opposition called for protests in a rare show of defiance inspired by uprisings in other Arab states and the toppling of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The worst clashes appeared to have taken place in the eastern Cyrenaica region, centred on Benghazi, where support for Gaddafi has historically been weaker than in other parts of the country.
Libya’s Quryna newspaper reported on Thursday that the regional security chief had been removed from his post over the deaths of protesters in Bayda.
Libyan opposition groups in exile claimed that Bayda citizens had joined with local police forces to take over Bayda and fight against government-backed militias, whose ranks are allegedly filled by recruits from other African nations.
Political analysts say Libyan oil wealth may give the government the capacity to smooth over social problems and
reduce the risk of an Egypt-style revolt.
Gaddafi’s opponents say they want political freedoms, respect for human rights and an end to corruption.
The government has proposed the doubling of government employees’ salaries and released 110 suspected anti-government figures who oppose him – tactics similar to those adopted by other Arab governments facing recent mass protests.
Gaddafi also has been meeting with tribal leaders to solicit their support.
