Editor's note: Eileen Prasher is a journalist and author who has covered the Middle East for 20 years. She teaches journalism at Florida Atlantic University and serves as digital director for the university's MediaLab@FAU. Opinions expressed in this opinion piece are her own. Find more opinion on CNN.
Jerusalem CNN —
The decorations were up, fans were trickling in, and literary types were milling around with wine glasses in hand.
Jordana Miller
Eileen Prasher
But something was missing at this year's Jerusalem International Writers Festival, which concluded late last month. Something was missing, really.
The festival's artistic director, Julia Ferment-Zeisler, had been considering whether the beloved book festival should go ahead this year. With Israeli society still reeling from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people, some 300 soldiers fallen in fighting since then, and the harrowing wait for many Israelis held captive in Gaza, this year's festival looked set to become a casualty of the war. Israeli attacks since that attack have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza and reduced large swaths of the territory to rubble, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
First, there was the name of the gathering: this year it was called simply the Jerusalem Writers Festival. For the first time since its inception in 2008, the word “international” had quietly dropped from the title, as few international writers wanted to come to Israel amid the devastating war in Gaza. Festival organizers said that several “A-list” American writers who had originally agreed to participate backed out, either because they feared for their safety or because they feared the pressure they might face from headlining a festival in Israel.
Ferment Zeisler, an Israeli author of two acclaimed novels, decided that despite the bleak outlook, a literary-focused gathering was more important than ever.
“The moment I decided that I didn’t want to cancel it, the moment I began to believe that literature has the power to change hearts and minds, to inspire empathy and humanity, I was determined to make it happen no matter what the cost,” she told me before the festival began. “Literature is a bridge between people, it belongs to all of humanity.”
These are words that appeal to me, and they sound very good on paper. Nearly eight months since the war began, Israeli writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers have been boycotted, booed and banned like never before. In times of war, we need literary minds to light the way. Those who have ridden the boycott wave by targeting literary festivals and other cultural venues are missing an opportunity to win hearts and minds and imagine a better future.
cast a shadow over the literary world
There are many examples of how the ongoing war is casting a dark shadow over the literary world. The annual Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, was recently thrown into disarray with a number of artists cancelling their participation due to the festival's sponsorship by an investment management company with ties to Israel. The festival eventually backed down and announced that it was temporarily severing ties with Baillie Gifford, which had been the festival's main sponsor since 2016. In another major literary event crumbling under the strain of the war, PEN America decided to cancel its World Voices festival after a series of writers pulled out, succumbing to boycott efforts and complaints that festival organizers were not critical enough of Israel.
In a statement announcing the festival's cancellation in late April, PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel sounded outraged. “We share the grief over the loss of life and devastation caused by war. We listen to the critics,” she wrote. “We now face a campaign that casts our struggle to reflect our complexity, maintain our identity as a large organization, and remain true to our principles as a moral abdication. The notion that engaging with people who hold different perspectives is an unjustifiable act denies the very possibility of dialogue.”
In a letter announcing their withdrawal from the festival in March, a group of writers accused PEN of not doing enough to support the Palestinians. “As Israel's war on Gaza continues, we believe PEN America has betrayed the organization's professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to the freedom and safety of writers around the world,” the letter read. In addition to canceling the festival, PEN has called for a ceasefire and established a $100,000 emergency fund for Palestinian writers, according to the Associated Press.
With all this tragedy and senseless violence unfolding in the Middle East, it is inevitable and it should be in turmoil for the world of writers. But it is unfortunate that in the end, writers have suffered losses, as no meaningful exchanges took place and no prizes were awarded that would have provided significant financial support to writers. This is a blow to an already financially strained ecosystem where it is difficult for artists and writers to survive.
Of course, these are not the only war-related suspensions the literary world has experienced, and Jewish authors have not been the only ones to face controversy. But for many Jewish writers, myself included, the silence feels universally painful and increasingly targeted. And as New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof put it in a recent column, “If you defend the human rights of only Israelis, or only Palestinians, you don't actually care about human rights.”
Just days after I attended the rather sad and low-key opening ceremony of the Jerusalem Writers Festival, Jewish graphic novelist Miriam Rybicki was barred from a comics festival in Vancouver, and tensions reached such a boiling point when the Israeli women's soccer team was harassed by pro-Palestinian protesters at a European Championship qualifying match between Scotland and Israel that security decided to play the game in an empty stadium.
The main message is that Israelis or those with connections to Israel have no place in the public sphere, even if their role there is to score goals, make art, or write books. Some Jewish writers say they are blacklisted or asked to publicly declare themselves anti-Zionist before they are eligible for a seat at the table or on the program.
I respect the right to protest any government and to decline to participate in events that do not align with one's values, but the frenzy to boycott all things Israel, combined with indifference to the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7th and its long history of suicide bombings on buses and in cafes, makes me feel like there's something more to it than opposition to this war. Do we even need to call it by name?
If there is any space where humans can connect, share ideas, and expose themselves to something beyond what we know, it seems to be the world of literature. Some might argue that subjecting writers to a literary litmus test reminiscent of McCarthyism in the 1950s or much darker times in Europe is not only a missed opportunity for open-minded engagement, but also a debasement of our cultural space and the very nature of the text.
Sir Simon Schama, the British historian and award-winning documentary maker, now a professor at Columbia University and one of the few international authors who agreed to be a guest at the Jerusalem festival, said in an interview between sessions that the main aim of such an open forum among authors was “not a gladiatorial match, but a forum for free debate and discussion.” He expressed dismay at the almost complete lack of foreign authors on the roster here, and denounced what he called the British “boycott siege” of the Hay Festival.
Troublesome questions remain
All of this raises an interesting question: Do such boycotts actually work? Do they bring about change, or do they just make the boycotted feel even more vilified and marginalized? Judging from what I saw and heard during my recent visit to Israel, it seems to be mainly the latter. The Israelis most affected by this boycott are already leaning to the left. They do not support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and have been protesting since he tried to reform the country's democratic institutions last year. They are even more outraged now that the prime minister appears to be prioritizing his goal of a “total victory” over Hamas over what should be his number one priority: saving the lives of the hostages.
A few other international authors were in attendance—novelist John Irving had agreed to come but was forced to join via Zoom after contracting COVID-19—but the overall atmosphere was noticeably less international than the previous five times I've attended the festival, including its inaugural year. Of course, in a country whose wallpaper is covered in images of its citizens literally being murdered or kidnapped, the festival was meant to be more inward-looking.
The opening night also included a 7 October tribute, highlighting the voices of writers and poets affected by the war, as well as previously unknown people who lost family members on that day. Ferment Zeisler felt that an escapist approach was wrong, so she and her team decided to ensure that everything they did connected to the reality they lived. For example, a quiz night for Harry Potter fans was dedicated to Noya Dan, a 12-year-old girl who was murdered along with her grandmother while visiting one of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas.
In another meaningful moment, renowned Israeli novelist Eshkol Nebo took to the stage under the stars to recite a prose-like poem about how, since October 7, he has dutifully agreed to go everywhere he was invited, speaking to the grieving, the hurting and the traumatized.
“These past few months I've learned what power and importance words have, and that as storytellers we have the power to heal and give hope. Since this war began, I've been more like a therapist than a writer,” she said, reading in light-hearted Hebrew. “Sometimes I feel like I'm overwhelmed, and sometimes I wonder why people turn to writers when they're suffering.”
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Perhaps it is because we need writers' help to better understand our own pain, and the pain of others. Perhaps with that in mind, after covering the Iraq War, which began in 2003, I wrote a novel written from the perspective of an Iraqi protagonist. I was relieved when Iraqi friends told me that I somehow “got” them, and when closer readers told me that through this character they were able to empathize with Iraqis in a way they hadn't before. I felt that I had achieved something, even in a small way, that goes to the heart of why we read and write. If books can't take us into the world of others and paint a clearer, truer picture of humanity, I don't know what can.
But it is this reading and listening that has opened my eyes to the reality of Palestinian life under occupation and has led me to support a two-state solution, or any viable solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and dignity. Inspired by each other's literature, having conversations about things bigger than our current problems, brings us closer to that reality. I want to believe that imagining that future is not just fiction.
