The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict represents at the beginning of the 21st Century
the paradigm of the politization of forgiveness, of the humanitarization of
ethnic conflict, of the instrumentalization of culture as a tool for solving
conflicts, pacifying violence, rebuilding the social tissue, etc. Gaza and the
West Bank are laboratories of war technologies, systematic urbicide, security
and protest control, which Israel exports to the rest of the world – including
to Mexico. Mexico and Israel have in common a vast record of human rights
violations that remain unpunished; Israel’s include dispossession, expulsion,
oppression, siege, tyranny of incertitude, land and vital resources theft,
psychogical torture, surveillance, continuous control and limitations of
movement of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians’ Nakba (or catastrophe) did not only occur in 1948 with the creation
of the State of Israel, but it is ongoing. Along with the endless and futile
peace process – the Palestinian negotiation team quit two weeks ago on the
grounds of the “unprecedented increase of colonization and oppression against
Palestine and the Palestinian people,” – Israeli impunity is due to the
exceptionality for which the State of Israel lobbies across the world. To make
another analogy between Mexico and Israel, we could mention two incidents that
occurred in Mexico in the past month, which are worthy of any apartheid state: first,
the expulsion of two young doctoral students and indigenous women, who wanted
to eat at a French bakery shop in San Cristóbal, Chiapas (allegedly the owner
mistook them for beggars). Second, Aeromexico prevented seven indigenous men
from Oaxaca from boarding a national flight. Taking these parallels into
account, it makes sense that the Mexican government would entertain Israel as a
special guest to Guadalajara’s 2013 International Book Fair. If we consider
that a week before inaugurating the Fair, Shimon Peres will head a delegation
of eighty representatives of Israeli corporations for an Israel-Mexico business
encounter in Mexico City, the Fair reveals itself as part of a diplomatic
machinery geared at reaffirming the links between the countries. The visit of
the Israeli business men’s delegation will include an audience with President
Enrique Peña Nieto and telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim, before whom they
will present a range of possibilities of cooperation between the nations and
the companies; amongst them: in the fields of security, internet, military
technology (drones), banking, water and energy. With this visit – aside from strengthening
business ties – Israel seeks to present itself as a country beyond the Middle
East conflict, as a harbinger of technology and entrepreneurship. In this
context, it becomes clear that culture plays a key role: in order to cultivate
an image as a liberal and democratic country, Israel tries to better and to
feed its image through cultural events.
Protests against the presence of
Israel in the International Book Fair, – to denounce its gradual destruction of
Palestinians, its expansionist and colonial politics – however, differently
than in other parts of the world, have been almost imperceptible. For instance,
when in 2007 it was announced that Israel would be the guest of honor at the Turin
Book Fair, a wave of protests emerged immediately in Italy, and many personalities
supported the call for boycott made by Arab writer’s associations. On October
27th, in the section El correo
ilustrado of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, appeared a fragment
of a release titled: “About Israel as a Special Guest at Guadalajara’s Book
Fair.” The signatories (most of them academics in Mexico), wanted to “highlight
the necessity of having the history of Israel very present as well as
considering the fact that its creation provoked the tragedy of the Palestinian
people, condemned to exile.” They manifested their wish that during the Fair –
to which some of them will be guests and panelists – what happened to the
Palestinian people is remembered, as they evoke the history of the creation of
Israel, its Zionist origins and they underline the “confessional and ethnic
character” of a “Fundamentalist Jewish” State formally dressed as a Western
democracy. The cosigners further propose “real peace” in the hands of civil
society – amongst them thinkers, writers and creators. In sum, in the release
they ask Mexico to recognize both States and that Palestine be a guest to the
Fair in 2015. Debatably, this approach to armed conflict, occupation and
continuous dispossession as a matter of cultural dialogue in the hands of civil
society, validating an event that promotes the State of Israel, obviating
parallelisms with Mexico, passes as a mere formal gesture to alleviate
consciences. The call for equal representation and recognition of Palestine could
be framed within a conception of culture with redemptive potential. We are
looking at the world as it is, and we act as if we could change it, knowing
that it is not enough. And yet, most of the Mexican literati, followed the
official line and chose to ignore the conflict in the Middle East represented
by Israel, and to profit from the meetings, networking, publishing contracts,
lectures and book presentations offered by the Book Fair. This is perhaps why
‘culture’ has become an ensemble of discourses that always end up on the side
of power and capital; from this point of view, to press for ‘the right thing
being done,’ and for ‘saying the truth,’ are still obviating that the system is
broken, that political processes are not in the hands of the people but in the
hands of very few. And although at least a small sector of the Mexican
intelligentsia submitted a release that has had minimal transcendence, the
political and financial class in Mexico and Israel that will gather before the
Book Fair begins (those who represent the interests of the 1%) no longer feel
the need to justify what they do to generate profits. This is why culture is
administered by cultural producers who are part of a compensatory mechanism of
neoliberal dispossession and devastation. In this context, culture is the
supplement of a business meeting that represents the interests of the oligarchy
at the global level. This is further underlined by the fact that during the
Book Fair, round tables will be devoted to the topics of: national security,
public security, challenges and perspectives on teaching security in both
countries, as well as the “Police Single Command Model in Mexico,” presided by members
of the army and retired officers, academics, counterterrorism specialists,
security experts from Mexico and Israel.
Visible action? From its inception
in 2005, the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Campaign (or BDS), a call to
boycott Israel, has served as a tool to strengthen civilian resistance against
Israeli occupation; it is addressed to Israeli companies and products, as well
as to cultural and academic institutions in Israel, who directly contribute to
maintain, defend and hide the oppression of the Palestinians. Where is the call
to boycott Israel’s presence as a guest of honor at the Guadalajara
International Book Fair? Having Israel as a special guest at the Book Fair is
an explicit politics of complicity with Israeli occupation: the participants
are ambassadors of Israel, assistants are collaborators and part of the
propaganda. As Jehan Helou, president of the Palestinian association IBBY (International Board of Books for Young
People) wrote in a letter to the director
of Guadalajara’s Book fair: “To have Israel as a guest is to award occupation,
colonization and oppression; it is to help a racist state to whitewash its
crimes against the Palestinian people. Shimon Peres, the war criminal, together
with his delegation of businessmen constitute a black page in the history of
culture.” Writers and thinkers with nothing to loose are needed like Aharon Shabtaï, Bertolt Brecht, Louis Aragon, André Breton,
Jean-Paul Curnier, Juan Goytisolo, Mahmoud Darwish, Jean-Luc Godard…
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