Haidar Eid, The Electronic Intifada, 9 August 2010
"An initiative recently launched by the prestigious online literature magazine Words without Borders entitled "Cross-Cultural-Dialogues in the Middle East," rings alarm bells in light of the Palestinian civil society call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
The initiators of this series of articles are Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, who describes herself as being of Iranian Muslim background, and Chana Morgenstern, an Israeli fiction writer, who met as graduate students at Brown University in the United States. Van der Vliet Oloomi and Morgenstern are now in Jerusalem undertaking to travel around "crossing borders," and opening "dialogue" with persons from many different cultural and political locations.....
How do Palestinians negotiate this "hybrid social landscape?" By raising their own and others' consciousness that we are under a state of siege, facing the daily threat of extermination, and using all means in our power to resist and to preserve our communities and our culture.
Unfortunately the Words without Borders initiative appears oblivious to these realities and speaks about Palestinians and Israelis in a language that obscures vast power differences that must be at the center of any serious, engaged and principled inquiry or action.
Given these realities and the fact that this project is a blatant violation of the boycott guidelines endorsed by most Palestinian intellectuals, it is unlikely that many Palestinians will choose to participate. Those who do participate will not be members of the University Teachers' Association in Palestine, or the Palestinian Writers' Union, or even most Palestinian universities. Indeed, the choice is clear to the vast majority of Palestinians, and intellectuals must recognize that true "cross-cultural dialogue" is impossible when one voice is being stifled, silenced and erased by another."
"An initiative recently launched by the prestigious online literature magazine Words without Borders entitled "Cross-Cultural-Dialogues in the Middle East," rings alarm bells in light of the Palestinian civil society call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
The initiators of this series of articles are Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, who describes herself as being of Iranian Muslim background, and Chana Morgenstern, an Israeli fiction writer, who met as graduate students at Brown University in the United States. Van der Vliet Oloomi and Morgenstern are now in Jerusalem undertaking to travel around "crossing borders," and opening "dialogue" with persons from many different cultural and political locations.....
How do Palestinians negotiate this "hybrid social landscape?" By raising their own and others' consciousness that we are under a state of siege, facing the daily threat of extermination, and using all means in our power to resist and to preserve our communities and our culture.
Unfortunately the Words without Borders initiative appears oblivious to these realities and speaks about Palestinians and Israelis in a language that obscures vast power differences that must be at the center of any serious, engaged and principled inquiry or action.
Given these realities and the fact that this project is a blatant violation of the boycott guidelines endorsed by most Palestinian intellectuals, it is unlikely that many Palestinians will choose to participate. Those who do participate will not be members of the University Teachers' Association in Palestine, or the Palestinian Writers' Union, or even most Palestinian universities. Indeed, the choice is clear to the vast majority of Palestinians, and intellectuals must recognize that true "cross-cultural dialogue" is impossible when one voice is being stifled, silenced and erased by another."
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