An open letter to the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Amir Or responds to his critics.

Dear Mr James Bowen,

Yes, it is my honour to accept the invitation of the Dublin Writers Festival to read my poetry to the Irish people. I do believe we all strive to be better people, and I'm sure your intentions are good. However, I can't collaborate with your boycott and protest against the sponsoring of my flight ticket by the Israeli foreign affairs ministry at the request of the Dublin Writers Festival. I'm proud and happy that my country assists its poets and artists this way, and that's both Jews and Arabs, regardless of their political views.

I'm not an adherent of states and borders in general; however, being born here, I'm an Israeli citizen and taxpayer. Our governments often sponsor both actions I agree with and actions I'm opposed to. Luckily I'm living in the only democratic state in the Middle East, where all opinions are heard and governments are voted for. Therefore, public debate and education, rather than enforcing one's view by boycotting our country, seem to be the better means for change.

The truth is that atrocities have been done on both sides of the conflict. The people you're siding with have proved to be at least as murderous, intolerant to free speech and terrorising even their own brothers. Regretfully, the suffering in our region is to a large extent self-inflicted by both sides; it's a pity we can't all live together in peace and love without national, religious and other xenophobic notions. It has been a terrible bloody feud, a vicious circle in which voices like mine, calling for human dialogue and promoting it, are often misunderstood and seem irrelevant to the politically minded.

By your logic, I'm not sure it's right to get assistance from any government nor pay taxes or even suffer its regime acquiescently. Should one visit the UK, which has never made up for its colonial past and plays a dubious role in Iraq now? Or even Ireland and Switzerland, whose governments have acquiescently supported the Nazi regime at the time? Should one deal, with a clean conscience, with the Arab states where minorities and free speech are oppressed? With France, which has played a terrible role in Africa? Or with the dictatorial Chinese regime that crushed Tibet?

I'm not sure I know the answer, but I do know that in this kind of ethical Olympics individuals are entirely ignored, and there can't be any winners; I don't find this approach very constructive.

Despite the fact that I think the occupation of the West Bank is indeed destructive to all of us, our own bleak history as victims of genocide and colonialism makes it quite difficult for me to accept you, Mr Bowen, as a kind of ethical commissar for whom I should be answerable. I'm surrounded by "people of conscience" who profit tremendously from this life-consuming conflict and keep telling me off for not talking in black-and-white judgmental terms. Regretfully, since for too many the whole problem means only talking in that fashion, it naturally gets to simplistic and often one-sided extremist views and declarations. Unfortunately I think the situation is far more complex and the mental damage on both sides is much deeper.

On my part, I do whatever I can by day-to-day hard work to dissolve hatred and dehumanisation in people's hearts and create here an island of sanity through our Hebrew-Arabic school, in the Shaar Poetry Festival etc. These projects serve to foster the future cultural leadership of both our peoples but perhaps you'll find them too small a help compared to the grand scale on which you are working.

Nevertheless, I don't think I'm going to live by anybody's political agenda, or join this competition of verbal offences and mutual accusations. My whole life experience tells me this is the way that leads to conflict and war.

I'm not thinking about people as faceless mass. Instead, I believe in individuals and in direct action. I'm not going to Dublin with a political agenda, but rather with my own. I hope to be saying something worthwhile as a poet to all people, ie, to individuals regardless of their being raised as Jews, Palestinians, Irish, Germans, British etc.

In my experience, bringing people back to their common human bond is miraculously possible through poetry and poetic collaboration, as well as through other avenues of acquaintance, respect and love. In my opinion, solving wars and conflicts is possible through healing the mental wounds afflicted on both sides. Restoring human dignity and responsibility, striving through affinity for a mutual acceptance of an ethical code are the healers of human erratic thinking and actions. I'm sorry but I can't enlist to this kind of political army of ethnic thinking. I think I'd rather take Jesus's advice in this matter.

In these more toilsome and long-range endeavours, in the educational and ethical arenas, we're struggling here to heal this twisted frame of mind from which such conflicts arise. Much help is needed in our region, and if ou'd like to take real action, your assistance here could be of true value.

Love,

Amir Or