Ian McEwan hits out at Israel’s ‘great injustice’

Ian McEwan has put himself firmly at the centre of the ongoing debate over East Jerusalem settlements by calling them a "great and self-evident injustice". But he used an unlikely stage: that of the Jerusalem International Book Fair.
 
There were numerous calls for him to boycott the award for which he was nominated, which requires the winner to travel to Israel to collect it in person. Undeterred, McEwan publically announced last month that he was going to go, saying: "One should always make a distinction between a civil society and its government."
 
McEwen admitted that he could not escape the politics of his decision, but said he wanted to find out the facts for himself. He also attended a weekly protest against evictions of Arabs held on Friday in East Jerusalem’s controversial Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
 
Speaking at the award ceremony on Sunday, McEwan addressed a packed room that included the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, and Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat. He condemned the "process of the right of return granted to Jews but not to Arabs, the so-called facts on the ground of hardening concrete over the future.”
 
The 62-year-old novelist went on: "Future generations of Palestinian and Israeli children will inherit the conflict and find it even more difficult to resolve than it is today." He also spoke out against Hamas for embracing, "the nihilism of the suicide bomber, of rockets fired blindly into towns, and the extinctionist policy towards Israel."
 
According to left-wing Israeli paper Haaretz, his speech was greeted with a "polite but tense silence".
 
The conservative daily, the Jerusalem Post, reported that many were "angered" by McEwen’s statements. "Some of the ways he rationalised things were exaggerated," said Aya, a Jerusalem regular at the book fairs.
 
"Thanks to Israel’s democracy," wrote a Jerusalem Post editorial, "McEwan can come to Jerusalem to receive the prize while at the same time demonstrating or speaking out… against Israel’s domestic or foreign policies."
 
McEwan is donating the $10,000 prize money to Combatants for Peace, a group run by former-Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters who work for peace and cooperation. ·