{"id":9353,"date":"2009-07-02T08:17:11","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T13:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=9353"},"modified":"2009-07-02T09:22:07","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T14:22:07","slug":"claire-messud-walking-miles-in-palestinian-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=9353","title":{"rendered":"Claire Messud: Walking miles in Palestinian feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Claire Messud | June 29, 2009<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A Palestinian woman cooks near her house, which was destroyed during the three-week offensive Israel launched in Gaza last December, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 2, 2009. Amnesty International said on Thursday Israel inflicted wanton destruction in the Gaza Strip in attacks that often targeted Palestinian civilians during an offensive in December and January in the Hamas-run enclave.The London-based rights group, in a 117-page report on the 22 days of fighting, also criticised the Islamist movement Hamas for rocket attacks on Israel, which it called war crimes. REUTERS\/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa<\/p><\/div>I RECENTLY returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Some 20-odd writers from the world over – including the popular British travel writer and comedian Michael Palin; Sweden\u2019s preeminent thriller writer Henning Mankell; and Canada\u2019s Giller Prize-winning M.G. Vassanji – found our events at Jerusalem\u2019s Palestine National Theater shut down by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers in flak jackets. On the first evening, with a Gallic flourish, Jean-Paul Ghoneim of the French Consulate opened the French Cultural Center impromptu, and hosted our event on nominally French soil: we paraded through the streets in our party clothes, bearing trays of canap\u00e9s and looking, I\u2019m sure, very threatening indeed. <\/p>\n

By the festival\u2019s closing night, the British Consul General Richard Makepeace had made plans to welcome us at the British Council – which was fitting because the British Council was the festival\u2019s primary sponsor.<\/p>\n

You might well ask how a bunch of novelists and nonfiction writers could be so dangerous as to require a military-ordained ban in a democratic country. I can\u2019t tell you; except that our literary festival had the word \u201cPalestine\u2019\u2019 in its title, and the use of this word in Jerusalem apparently constitutes a security threat. The city has been declared the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009, and according to Palestinians we met, the Jerusalem police have shut down more cultural events than they have permitted – including the timed release, by schoolchildren, of colored balloons in celebration of Al-Quds. Balloons are also a security risk.<\/p>\n

[Read the article<\/a> | view more photos<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Claire Messud | June 29, 2009 I RECENTLY returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom. Some 20-odd writers … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-2qR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9353"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9365,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions\/9365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}