Palestinian writers are refusing to meet Ian McEwan, who is in Israel, accepting an award and meeting up with man of yesterday David Grossman. Oh I loved Ian McEwan in the day. Here Ynet’s coverage:
Having shrugged off calls to refuse an Israeli literary honor, Ian McEwan has found himself boycotted by Palestinian writers with whom he had sought to help foster peaceful dialogue.
But as a British novelist whose protagonists are shaped by often violent historical fate, McEwan makes no apology for coming to Israel after what he describes as lifelong fascination with its freedoms mixed with misgivings about its tactics…
“No, let us come and engage, keep talking. The worst thing that is going to happen is when everyone stops talking,” he said, responding to the complaints of a small coalition of pro-Palestinian artists and academics in Britain and Israel who had demanded he back out.
McEwan planned to tour Jerusalem, the stone-walled heart of the Middle East conflict, and meet Israeli authors like David Grossman, whose meditations on the nation’s ills were shot through with tragedy when he lost a son to the 2006 Lebanon war.
But Palestinian writers McEwan had hoped to see begged off.
