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.

Livni gets fed up with factions' demands, prepares for elections

Hopes for any peace settlement this year were scrapped when Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni informed President Shimon Peres that she has given up trying to form a coalition that would enable her to become Israel’s next prime minister. As a result, Israel likely will hold general elections in February to determine its next leader.

An ex-Mossad agent and mother of two, Ms Livni had been striving for five weeks to form a coalition government. But after negotiations stalled, she conceded that there was no possibility of doing so. Now Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish former prime minister from the Likud party, is tipped to become the next leader. Livni's political stature is diminished after her failed attempts to reach across the aisle. Israelis spurn any sign of weakness.

Livni had been counting on the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which holds 12 seats in the Knesset, to join her but she balked at the party’s demands not to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority over the status of Jerusalem.

"I'm not willing to be blackmailed, either diplomatically or in terms of the budget, and therefore, I will go to elections," Livni said. "We'll see all these heroes in 90 days."

Shas’ non-negotiable stance puts the future of a two-state solution at risk and jeopardizes future negotiations. Shas also insisted on a 1.5 billion shekel ($394 million) increase for child allowances but Livni was willing to offer only 400 million shekel ($105 million), saying, “There are some things the State cannot be sold for.” Shas’ voter constituency includes big families and religious seminary students who depend on the government for significant financial subsidies for school and living expenses.

As Kadima’s newly elected chairwoman, Livni had 42 days to form a coalition and technically, she still has until Nov. 3 to do so. But without the support of Shas and United Torah Judaism, another religious party which currently holds six seats, she cannot amass enough seats in the Knesset for a coalition that comprises centrist and left-of-center parties.

Peres now has until Tuesday night to review the situation and inform the Knesset speaker of Livni’s inability to form a government, after which any of the 120 members of the Knesset will have three weeks to try to form a coalition. Israeli law requires a minimum of 61 members to form a coalition.

If a government is not formed within three weeks after Livni announces that she was unable to form a coalition, Peres will call for general elections, which are expected take place Feb. 17. The Current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will remain in office until a new coalition is formed following the new 2009 parliamentary elections. This is an unexpected breather for him, but his reputation is unlikely to be salvaged.

Olmert resigned his post Sept. 21 because of corruption investigations into his activities when he held ministerial positions in previous Israeli governments.

60 years on, the Dream of the Jewish State

Some fascinating snippets of history are posted by a thoughtful Tim Franks, on the BBC Jerusalem Diary

"Here, everyone begrudges everyone else," President Shimon Peres is quoted as saying.

So what do Israelis make of their compatriots, and their state? Check out the BBC Today programme's interviews with "five tribes" of the Holy Land: secular, settler, ultra-orthodox, Palestinian (the man in question rejects the label "Israeli Arab"), and a non-Jewish Russian immigrant.The one thing the five share is that they all hold Israeli citizenship.

# Yuli, the secular trainee teacher from Jerusalem: "The moment that people will prefer to deal with their own stuff, and dream their own dreams, rather than the dreams of the big Jewish nation, maybe the situation will get better."

# Shoshana, the settler from Qedumim: "This is the Middle East: another language, another code. It's not Europe; it's not America… My father, who built this state, always told us that we have to pay a tax, a price, for living here. We have an obligation to pay, as we don't have any other place to go."

# Mohammed, the Palestinian from a village near Nazareth: "The way Israel deals with its Arab minority is the indication of how the world should deal with the Jewish minority. If Israel continues to discriminate against the Arab minority in Israel, it has no moral right to speak against discrimination against Jews around the world."

# Jonathan, the Haredi (ultra-orthodox man) from Jerusalem: "Israel was meant to create a New Jew - the idea that the term Jew was not enough, and we had to create something new, something that was a rejection in many respects of the Jew of the exile. But that New Jew has turned out to be a chimera."

# Mila, the non-Jewish Russian immigrant, now living in Gedera: "I am not a Jew, no. But when I sing songs in class about love for the land of Israel, it's just like in Russia when we would have moments of love for our homeland. Then when I hear the songs and spoke with older Arabs, my heart hurts and I start to cry."

Izzy Bee is still out of the country at the moment, but will touch down at Ben Gurion Airport to embark on the nation's 61st year.

Olmert slams right-wing displays of hatred

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has launched a vitriolic attack on extreme right-wingers, responding to a campaign to release a political assassin and incitement against talks with the Palestinians.

Olmert, who yesterday said he may be able to conclude a peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of George Bush's term, vowed that such antics would not dissuade him from persevering with negotiations.

"We are prepared to make compromises because security is based on peace and peace requires painful compromises," he said in a speech to a managers' conference in Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv.

"We will combat extremist phenomena with zero tolerance.

"I am convinced that most people in Israel, be they Jewish or Arab, secular or religious, do not accept the flood of hatred eating away at the democratic foundations of our society," Olmert added.

Extreme right-wingers are campaigning for the release of Yigal Amir, the extremist Jewish assassin who gunned down former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin 12 years ago for his policy of reconciliation with the Palestinians.

Olmert also slammed protests from Jerusalem football fans, who booed and cat-called through a minute's silence to honour Rabin at the start of a game late on Sunday, as "intolerable" behaviour from a "handful of people."

Around 2,000 extreme-right Israelis, many of them Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, on Sunday staged the first significant protest against Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ahead of a US-sponsored peace conference.

Olmert also condemned posters put up by right-wing activists that depict Israeli President Shimon Peres in the black and white keffiyeh headdress that was a trademark of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"What do such posters mean? That you think the president of Israel does not defend the interests of Israel but of Arabs?" he hammered.

Posters depicted Rabin in the same way during a campaign of right-wing incitement that preceded his assassination in 1995.
(AFP report)

Filmmaker Lynch meditates on peace in the City of David and how to erase War

David Lynch, the noir film director best known for Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and the weird tv series Twin Peaks, has arrived in the Holy Land to instruct cinema students and Israeli leaders alike on how to banish war through thought vibes. He funds his own consciousness-raising institute to spread these uncommon notions, and was met by Israel's celebrity-obsessed President, Shimon Peres (first cousin of actress Lauren Bacall). Other audiences here, hardened from years of intifada violence, appeared rather less than convinced.

Journalists who were packed into Lynch's press conference in Jerusalem's Sam Spiegel Institute collectively rolled their eyes when he pooh-poohed peace mediation; Lynch advocates peace meditation instead. (Sorry, Condi. Assume the lotus position and cease the shuttle diplomacy. Now.)

With a staight face, the cinema guru of the grotesque told these hardboiled hacks that war could be banished if only 240 individuals would simultaneously practice transcendental meditation for 40 minutes every day. Each would need "total brain coherence" instead of using a mere 5-10 per cent of their gray matter, as us less-evolved mortals typically do. With that amount of effort, humankind could "say goodbye to the horror of hate." Lynch pointed to unified field theory as the way to achieve
"real peace, which is the absence of all negativity, not simply the absence of war", as all "dark horrors dissolve." The analogies shifted to the organic, and the human condition was likened to a diseased tree which needs root treatment, but then they segued to the surreal. If you don't want to "cramp your happiness", Lynch said helpfully, just shed the "suffocating rubber clownsuit" of hatred. "If you can think it, you can do it." Uh-huh.

This was pure LA-speak, honed after decades of meditation sessions. With wings of silver hair framing his pink face, Lynch showed all of his 61 years and appeared afflicted with Jerusalem Syndrome, or else jet lag had him speaking in tongues. He resembled the leading man from his baffling cult classic, Eraserhead, As for cinema, Lynch confirmed that "Film is dead, digital is here, and the director's manipulation of the image is now almost infinite."
He will be mentoring master classes of film students and Israeli directors in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv until the end of the week.

Envoy with clout: Madge, aka Esther

Madonna and a Hollywood claque of Kabbalah neo-mystics celebrated the Jewish New Year in Israel. Afterward, the singer met with Israeli President Shimon Peres to discuss the peace process.

Madonna and her film director husband, Guy Ritchie, joined thousands of followers of Kabbalah in Tel Aviv last week to celebrate the Jewish New Year. The actress Demi Moore and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, fashion designer Donna Karan and former moonbat talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell tagged along.
Madonna merited a 2-hour meeting with Peres, who as Lauren Bacall's cousin, has Hollywood links of his own. She reportedly gushed: "Tell me what I should do, Mr. Peres, because I am in love with Israel.” It was almost a Marilyn Monroe moment.
They discussed how to advance the peace process, and the need for conciliation and tolerance throughout the world. Madonna promised to promote such values in her songs and kiddie books.
As she ages, Madonna has become increasingly involved in humanitarian issues. She is also behind the trend of Hollywood stars dabbling in the mystical form of Judaism called Kabbalah, which is said to be too powerful for the under-40s. Sorry about that, Kutcher. Esther is the plain Biblical name she prefers for her Kabbalah persona, in which red string replaces glitz on her muscled wrists.

Madonna last visited Israel three years ago, on a Kabbalah-centered trip to the north. But her virgin trip here was in 1993, when she performed as the material girl in Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park. She'll be back next weekend for Yom Kippur. What might happen if she would meet with the Palestinian side? Or, say, joined the quartet? The mind only boggles.

Bacall and Peres: Kissin' Cousins

Spot the family resemblance?
It is perhaps not so obvious in the 1943 portraits of these famous Polish first cousins.


















The sultrier one is Betty Joan Perske, who Californicated her screen name to Lauren Bacall; when her cuz Szymon Perski immigrated to Israel, he Hebrewized his name to Shimon Peres. The erstwhile leader--who already has been Israel's prime minister, foreign minister, defence minister, and finance minister-- now aims to be the next President and has not hesitated to highlight the Hollywood connection before parliament picks one. Their families originally hail from a small shtetl in Wolozyn, Poland (now Valozhyn, in Belarus.) Ms Bacall, born in New York City, is younger by one year and has the huskier voice. She was nominated for an Oscar, but never won one. Peres had to share his Nobel Peace Prize (Piece prize?) with Arafat.

A last-minute plug from Ehud Olmert, who has a dismal 3 per cent approval rating, may not be much of an endorsement.
"We have to make sure that this man, who deserves it more than any other, is chosen on Wednesday to head the state and represent it honorably, just as he has done for so many years," Olmert said in the Knesset today.