Marek Halter defends Israeli writers

A petition in Italy is calling for a boycott of Israeli writers who are the guests of honour in the International Book Fair of Turin, May 8th-12th. It has been signed by, among others, Dario Fo, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. The French writer Marek Halter is outraged. "Chateaubriand understood that if the Jews are the only people to have survived from Antiquity up until to nowadays, it is thanks to its roots in books. ... All those who have desired the death of the Jews had to start by burning their books. ... During the reign of Louis IX, known as St. Louis, in the 13th century, cart-loads of Talmudic people were burnt on the Place de Grève in Paris, and again, two centuries later, at the time of the Spanish inquisition, and write up to the Nazi autodafés … . Is making literature disappear not the first step towards [the disappearance of Israel] ? Will there always be intellectuals to act as accomplices of such ignominy ?"

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