Boycotting Israeli Authors Is an Affront to Free Speech

[shira]

...Harris represents some of Israel’s most notable authors, including David Grossman and Meir Shalev. She also represented the single most popular book out of Israel in recent years, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens. Sapiens succeeded on a global scale, but it has not a word connecting it to Israeli culture or society. Apart from the author’s name, it could have been written anywhere.

Part of the painful irony in the boycott against Israeli authors is that the author’s political stance is irrelevant. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, a campaign to put pressure on Israel with the stated goal to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian lad, does not distinguish according to individual views.

For example,Grossman, whose leftist credentials are impeccable (and whose son died fighting against Hezbollah days after Grossman himself urged the government to accept a ceasefire), is forced to confront hostile audiences in Europe. Protesters question why he lives in Israel at all, no matter his views. Grossman has close relations with Palestinian writers and is a leading voice of the Israeli left. Yet that does not exempt him from the excoriation of the self-righteous. Grossman’s books are not only removed from shelves in the Arab world but even in such unlikely places as Glasgow, Scotland....

...It is dispiriting to find voices who otherwise support the freedom of expression speaking out to deny free expression to one country and one group of people. Despite constant existential pressure there is more freedom of expression in Israel than the majority of countries in the U.N. and more self-criticism than almost any other society on earth. “I have some promising young authors who are being denied a larger audience,” says Harris. “It is discouraging for them, of course, but I also feel the world is missing out.”

http://time.com/4385878/boycotting-israel-authors-free-speech/

The reason for BDS hostility towards all Israeli Jews is pure bigotry. To the antisemites, Israeli Jews are all the same - whether rightwing, centrist, or leftwing. All are considered "Zionists". Note that there isn't one instance of any boycott against an Israeli Arab. Only Jews. The BDS holes are just like Hamas in that regard as Hamas makes it clear they hate all Jews (Zionists). At least Hamas is more honest...

[Little Tich]

1. Weak sauce.

The conclusions in the OP are not supported by the evidence. Second hand hearsay about a drop off in Israeli authors not being translated, the success of the translation of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens completely ignored, fictional accounts of Israeli authors being removed from shelves in Glasgow, more fictional accounts about the reasons why Adalah-NY published an open letter urging PEN to not accept sponsorship from the Israeli government, etc. The OP is not credible when scrutinized, sorry.

While Googleing the background to the OP, I found an article about the libraries in upper Nazareth don't even have a single book in Arabic, in spite of a large Israeli Arab population. Please note the municipality's attempt to build a separate but equal library for books in Arabic:

Israeli City With 19% Arab Population Has No Arabic Library Books
Source: Haaretz, Mar 31, 2015

Two residents file formal complaint over libraries in Upper Nazareth having books in Hebrew, Russian, English, Spanish and French, but not one in Arabic.

Although 19 percent of the residents of Upper Nazareth are Arab, municipal libraries in the northern Israeli town don’t have a single volume in Arabic. On Monday, two local residents filed a formal administrative complaint in the hope of changing the situation.

The libraries in the town, located just outside the predominantly Arab city of Nazareth, have books in Hebrew, Russian, English, Spanish and French, but not Arabic. Moreover, Upper Nazareth’s libraries offer a range of enrichment activities for children, but few are conducted in Arabic for the estimated 2,000 native, Arabic-speaking young people in town.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which filed the petition on behalf of the two residents, said that for some three years it has been in contact with the Upper Nazareth municipality and with the Ministry of Culture and Sport about this situation.

In response, the municipality announced that efforts are under way to establish a separate library for the city’s Arab population at a community center in the Kramim neighborhood. However, ACRI claims that the collection currently consists of books filling a single set of shelves, adding that, even if it were more substantial, “residents are insistent in their demand that Arabic [volumes] be integrated into the other public libraries in the city.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.649749

Note: Haaretz premium article - Google title for access.

[shira]

2. You support boycotting Israeli authors, right? n/t

[Little Tich]

3. Hell, no.

I have a serious problem with the idea of banning books. It's just that the OP is trying to make it seem as if Israeli authors are boycotted, while the evidence doesn't support that argument at all. Hence the weak sauce.

[shira]

4. BDS calls for cultural boycotts, against normalization. They support banning books.

Your problem is with BDS, not this article.

[Little Tich]

5. Do you have any evidence for BDS banning books? n/t