Occupied Bookfair

Offices of the International Book Fair in Turin occupied by left-wingers

Here we go...!15 youths from local social centres have this morning occupied the offices and HQ of Fondazione della Fiera del libro in Turin. The occupiers have exposed a banner "No to Israel" and a palestinian flag at one of the windows.

Israele senza se e senza ma follows the events.

Here is a letter by Tariq Ali whom I personally find quite odious*. To read the letter in its fabulous entirety you would have to go to the source. I am only excerpting the parts I find more intriguing:


When I agreed to participate in the Turin Book Fair, which I have done before, I had no idea that the ‘guest of honour’ was Israel and its 60th birthday.

*

The cultural commissars know best. I have argued vigorously with some of the Israeli writers visiting the fair on other occasions and would have happily done the same again if conditions had been different. What they decided to do is an ugly provocation.

Pay attention: Honouring Israeli authors in a European book fair is "an ugly provocation"

It would appear that culture is increasingly bound to the political priorities of the US/EU nexus.

Of course it is all George Bush's fault

The West is blind to Palestinian suffering.

Sure. Like in this example or here.

There are some courageous Israeli critics like Aharon Shabtai, Amira Hass, Yitzhak Laor and others who will not permit their voices to be muffled in this fashion. Shabtai refused to attend this fair.

Get it? They refuse to be muffled, by gagging themselves; they refuse to appear in a platform which can expose them to thousands of European book lovers.

It is one thing to support Israel’s right to exist, which I do and always have done.

But, but, but...

Personally I favour a single Israel/Palestine in which all citizens are equal.

So he does not really support Israel's right to exist. If he did, he wouldn't think of destroying it in favour of a one-state blood-bath.

... I am often asked (most recently in Madison, Wisconsin) whether it might be possible to recreate the best times of al-Andalus and Sicily when three cultures co-existed for a long time.

My reply is the same: the only place today where it could be recreated is Israel/Palestine.

Al-andalus and Sicily are two regions dominated by the Arab Caliphate in which Christians and Jews were dhimmis. It is important to understand what exactly Ali refers to when he wishes Al-Andalus on Jewish Israel.

It was European anti-semitism that tolerated the judeocide of the second world war of which the Palestinians have now become the indirect victims.

This is an attempt to Palestinize the Holocaust, a somewhat new strategy by the Indecent Left, attempting to vitiate the Holocaust of its historical meaning. They colonize the term in order to exploit its horrors in promoting their own aims. What is their aim? Read Tariq Ali's letter where he outlines his preferred solution. If allowed to prevail, that solution spells the destruction of Israel, expulsion and mass-murder.

__________

*(I'm making a point of expressing my personal distaste so as to alert those of my readers who automatically like persons I find odious, and start quoting them with much belaboured enthusiasm)