Ian McEwan is in hot water with some of his lesser known fellows. A group of self-styled ‘pro-Palestinian authors’ wrote to the Guardian on Monday, and expressed their regret that McEwan will accept the biennial Jerusalem Prize. They averred that the prize, which is awarded to those who explore the theme of individual freedom in society, ‘is a cruel joke and a propaganda tool for the Israeli state.’
Some politically strident people have been cracking that cruel joke: Jorge Luis Borge, Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaiah Berlin, Susan Sontag, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Miller, V S. Naipaul and J M. Coetzee. However, as you may have noticed, these tools of perfidious Israel’s cynicism are all dab-hands with a pen and a sheet of paper. A lucky few have even been recognised by the Nobel Foundation, an old and long-suffering friend of peace in Palestine.
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