Prize novelist slams nihilism in 'the most intense place I have ever set foot in'

Ian McEwan, the outspoken author, will donate his $10,000 (£6,155) Jerusalem Prize for Literature to Combatants for Peace, an organization of former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian fighters. His recent award speech left the audience silent, reports the Guardian. His 1992 novel, Black Dogs, is widely read in Israel. Time for some atonement?

The British author Ian McEwan launched an eloquent attack on Israeli government policies in his speech accepting the Jerusalem prize for literature, saying "a great and self-evident injustice hangs in the air".

Before an audience that included Israel's president, Shimon Peres, culture minister, Limor Livnat, and Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, McEwan spoke of the nihilism on both sides of the conflict.

Addressing his remarks at the opening ceremony of Jerusalem's international book fair to "Israeli and Palestinian citizens of this beautiful city", the novelist said: "Hamas has embraced the nihilism of the suicide bomber, of rockets fired blindly into towns, and the nihilism of the extinctionist policy towards Israel."

But it was also nihilism that fired a rocket at the home of the Gazan doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish, killing three of his daughters and a niece during the Gazan war. "And it is nihilism to make a long-term prison camp of the Gaza Strip. Nihilism has unleashed a tsunami of concrete across the occupied territories."

The author referred to "continued evictions and relentless purchases of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, 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, over future generations of Palestinian and Israeli children who will inherit the conflict and find it even more difficult to resolve than it is today."

He called for an end to settlements and encroachments on Palestinian land.

Despite his stinging criticisms, to which his audience listened in silence, McEwan said he was "deeply, deeply touched to be awarded this honour that recognises writing which promotes the idea of the freedom of the individual in society".

He said that since his decision to come to Israel to accept the prize, "my time has not exactly been peaceful" – referring to demands "with varying degrees of civility" for him to boycott the ceremony.

Jerusalem, he said, was "the most intense place I have ever set foot in".

In the UK, he said, novelists were free to choose how much to write about politics. "Here, for both Israeli and Palestinian novelists, 'the situation' is always there ... It's a creative struggle to address it and a creative struggle to ignore it."

The idea of the freedom of the individual "sits a little awkwardly" with the situation in Jerusalem, McEwan said. He drew comparisons with the UK, saying: "We may have our homeless but we do have our homeland. We are neither threatened by hostile neighbours nor have we been displaced."

He referred to the Shoah, or Holocaust, as "that industrialised cruelty which will remain always the ultimate measure of human depravity, of how far we can fall, and acknowledged "the precious tradition of the democracy of ideas in Israel".

He devoted much of his speech to the nature of the novel which, he said, "has become our best and most sensitive means of exploring the freedom of the individual, and such explorations often depict what happens when that freedom is denied".

He singled out three celebrated Israeli authors – Amos Oz, AB Yehoshua and David Grossman – as "writers who love their country, and made sacrifices for it and have been troubled by the directions it has taken".

They had opposed the settlements, he said, and had become the country's "conscience, memory and above all hope".

In recent years these three writers had felt "the times turning against their hopes", he said.

The question, said McEwan, was Lenin's: what is to be done? Israel, he said, needed to harness the creativity of its writers, artists and scientists, and not "retreat to a bunker mentality".

"The opposite of nihilism is creativity. The mood for change, the hunger for individual freedom that is spreading through the Middle East is an opportunity more than it is a threat."

The prize was presented by Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, who has enthusiastically backed Jewish settlements in Arab areas of the city. Jerusalem, he said, was "open to everyone to express themselves in a free way". McEwan's writing promoted the "same tolerance as we promote here in Jerusalem," he said.

When Porush Comes to Shove- Jerusalem election gets underway

A whitebearded ultra-Orthodox candidate with a formidable scowl banks on voters being charmed by a cartoon of himself, while a Russian tycoon who speaks little Hebrew considers himself the dark horse in Jerusalem's bizarre mayoral race. Forget that nasty brawl in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where monks have not learned to take turns in more than a millenium. The real free-for-all will happen as ballots are tallied tonight to determine who'll be in charge of Jerusalem's City Hall.

The candidates are a cast of characters:

*NIR BARKAT, 49

Secular Israeli businessman who heads opposition on city council

*MEIR PORUSH, 53

MP since 1996 for United Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox party

*ARKADY GAYDAMAK, 56

A Russian-born businessman running under his adopted Hebrew name Arieh Bar-Lev

*DAN BIRON, 69

A former director of public television turned bar owner, Biron is running on behalf of the Green Leaf party and is calling for legalisation of cannabis.

Around the city, campaign posters have been shredded as soon as aides stick them up, and some religious parties balked at allowing any photographs of women candidates--some 33 are running for a varity of municipal positions--to be displayed on public buses. Oy veh.

Ben Lynfield, a locally-based journalist, reports how today's poll lays bare Jerusalem's tribal divides.

In a city usually dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, today's mayoral election in Jerusalem has lain bare its deep rifts as an ultra-Orthodox rabbi takes on a hi-tech entrepreneur for control of city hall.

Any last shred of pretence that the election is anything other than tribal warfare between the ultra-Orthodox and secular collapsed when the rabbi, Meir Porush, 53, suggested to supporters that a vote for him would be part of an ongoing ultra-Orthodox takeover of all of Israel's cities.

"Within 10 years there will not be a secular candidate at all in any city, except maybe in an abandoned village," he said. The father of 12 made the comment in Yiddish last week, but unbeknown to him, the remarks were being recorded and were later aired on Israeli television with Hebrew subtitles, harming his effort to win over secular voters.

The comment seemed to touch on the worst fears of secular Jerusalemites. In West Jerusalem's Kiryat Yovel neighbourhood, where secular residents have mobilised against plans to establish an ultra-Orthodox kindergarten, the election is seen as holding the key as to whether the area "falls" to the ultra-Orthodox.

"Kiryat Yovel has been a pluralistic place but now it is changing," said Judith Sudilovsky, a mother of two young children. "Neighbours are being told by the ultra-Orthodox not to use their washing machines on Saturday because it disturbs the Sabbath. I'm concerned that two markets that serve non-kosher food, where I buy shrimps, will be shut down."

Mr Porush's office has dismissed such fears. "Anything that is open today will not shut down except for economic reasons," a spokesman said.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews – who gained control of city hall for the first time five years ago – account for just over a quarter of the electorate, while secular voters make up more than 40 per cent. But with rabbis encouraging the faithful to vote for ultra-Orthodox candidates, voter turnout among that group is higher.

Israeli doves have no real choice in this election. Like Mr Porush, Nir Barkat, the entrepreneur, is vowing to build a new Jewish neighbourhood in Arab East Jerusalem, and he also supports settlement within existing Arab areas.

Also standing is Arkady Gaydamak, a Russian-born businessman and owner of Jerusalem's nationalist Beitar football team, who is being tried in absentia by a Paris court for allegedly selling arms to Angolan rebels during the 1990s. The fourth mayoral candidate is Dan Biron, a bar owner , representing the Green Leaf party, which is calling for the legalisation of cannabis.

Palestinians are expected to boycott the polling in line with Palestinian Authority directives not to lend legitimacy to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. But there is growing tensions in the area, with Israeli police evicting a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from their home over the weekend in what is seen as a move towards expansion of the Jewish settler presence in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.