Madam, - The programme of the 2006 Dublin Writers' Festival displayed the crest of the State of Israel. In this way, the organisers burnished the image of the state which is stealing Palestinian land by building the West Bank barrier that was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in July 2004. It is a prime example of what the eminent American writer, Edward Herman, has called "normalising the unthinkable".
This shameful promotion was in return for funding which the festival requested and received from the Israeli government to cover the air fare of the poet Amir Or.
When the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign learned of this, we decided to give Mr Or the opportunity of distancing himself from the illegal policies of his government. I sent him a personal email, asking that he publicly reject the sponsorship of his rogue government and offering to fund his travel to Dublin from IPSC funds. Instead of replying to me, Mr Or sent to The Irish Times (June 15th), an "open letter" which was replete with Zionist propaganda cliches and which revealed him to be an apologist for Israel's system of racist oppression and dispossession.
Mr Or boasts: "Luckily I'm living in the only democratic state in the Middle East". Palestinians, too, practise democracy. But Or's state has organised an international campaign to punish them for electing the "wrong" party in January.
When necessary, Israeli governments pay lip service to the notion of a Palestinian state beside Israel. In practice, however, they are implementing a one state "solution", in which Israeli control runs from the River Jordan to the sea, surrounding an economically unviable set of disjoint Palestinian islands, in which the "natives" are free to decide who collects the garbage in the overcrowded cities and refugee camps.
This policy differs little from South African apartheid, where such pseudo-independent islands of poverty were called bantustans.
The Afrikaans word "apartheid" means "apart-ness", or separation. White South Africans adopted it as a euphemism for their racist system.
The Hebrew word "hafrada" also deserves to enter the international lexicon. Like apartheid, it means separation.
Like South African usage of "apartheid", Israelis use "hafrada" as a euphemism for racism.
Apologists for Israel retort that, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa, some Palestinians were allowed to become citizens of hafrada Israel.
Mr Or, one of these apologists, is "proud and happy that my country assists its poets and artists. . . and that's both Jews and Arabs".
But the Palestinian citizens of Israel are subject to severe discrimination, although this is much better disguised than was the case in South Africa. The token support for Arab artists of which Mr Or boasts is part of the disguise.
The hafrada state must be shunned as a pariah. Organisers of cultural events should avoid lending it respectability, by refusing to seek or accept sponsorship from its agencies.
This struggle is only beginning. The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign asks the arts community in Ireland to avoid repeating the mistakes made in arranging the recent visit of Mr Or - Yours, etc,
JAMES BOWEN, Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, University College, Cork.