The British author Ian McEwan launched an eloquent attack on Israeli government policies in his speech accepting the Jerusalem prize for literature, saying "a great and self-evident injustice hangs in the air".
Before an audience that included Israel's president, Shimon Peres, culture minister, Limor Livnat, and Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, McEwan spoke of the nihilism on both sides of the conflict.
Addressing his remarks at the opening ceremony of Jerusalem's international book fair to "Israeli and Palestinian citizens of this beautiful city", the novelist said: "Hamas has embraced the nihilism of the suicide bomber, of rockets fired blindly into towns, and the nihilism of the extinctionist policy towards Israel."
But it was also nihilism that fired a rocket at the home of the Gazan doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish, killing three of his daughters and a niece during the Gazan war. "And it is nihilism to make a long-term prison camp of the Gaza Strip. Nihilism has unleashed a tsunami of concrete across the occupied territories."
About Me
- The Nag
- Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada
- My virtue is that I say what I think, my vice that what I think doesn't amount to much.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Ian McEwan attacks 'great injustice' in Israel
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