Response to an Open Letter

Press ReleaseFrom Ernesto Ferrero, Director, Turin International Book Fair and Rolando Picchioni, President

Dear Ernesto Ferrero and Rolando Picchioni,

I got your letter explaining your position about the invitation of Israel as a “guest of honour” at the Turin International Book Fair. I want to thank you for taking the time to write to me and to try to keep the dialogue opened. I appreciate it.

 

It is very difficult to follow you when you say, while celebrating Israel the very year of its 6oth anniversary, that “Inviting Israel means to invite its writers, scientists, musicians, artists, film directors: nothing else”. Nothing else? You both know as I know the symbolic dimension of this invitation: you are celebrating a State, and by extension in this very occasion, a government which will be representing the State. This is where we deeply disagree: to choose the State of Israel while you know what was, and still is, happening in the occupied territories – and just after the international community, almost unanimously, condemned the Gaza’s blockage – is neither wise nor fair towards the Palestinian and their dignity. I am sorry to repeat, you took a wrong and an unwise decision.

 

It would have been better, if you really wanted a critical discussion on the issue, to invite – as it has been suggested – Palestinian and Israeli writers and intellectuals to debate. I would have been the first to attend such meetings and open debates. Instead, you offer an open space and a seat of nobility to a government which is promoting an unacceptable policy towards the Palestinian civilians. I cannot understand that you do not understand my position! I am ready to talk to any Jewish intellectual (I shall be attending the Cambridge Muslim-Jewish Forum this month) but I will not remain silent when this is – or could be – used to support the unacceptable State policy.

My position is so clear that some opponents had to distort my statements to make them horrible! I never said, for instance, that “nothing can be accepted from the State of Israel” but, in Arabic (and this was confirmed by the Italian Agency ATIC) “We cannot accept everything coming from Israel”. I mentioned Egypt as a previous guest exactly as you did in your open letter and my position has nothing to do with a fatwa. What a non sense, such plain ignorance! A call for a boycott was launched before I was asked about it and I simply decided to support this call not to attend. It seemed to me it was a question of conscience and dignity.

We deeply disagree on the meaning of this celebration. You seem to minimise its effect and at the same time you give the floor to some blind supporters of Israel to confuse any kinds of criticisms towards Israel with anti-Semitism. This is very counterproductive and you may ask yourself which kind of responsibility your decision has, and will have, on that. I will fight any kind of anti-Semitism and racism but I want to be among those you are standing up against occupation, oppression and injustice. You had other ways to open intellectual and critical debates on this topic: I am afraid you chose the worst one and I cannot follow and even accept the rational of your letter.

I remain open to any discussion, debate and dialogue as long as I am not expected to speak freely while I had to pretend that the whole setting of the apparent debate is impartial and not quite tainted.

 

Yours sincerely,

Tariq Ramadan

 

 

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Turin, February 6, 2008

Dear Tariq Ramadan,

 

Last year You have been guest of the Turin Book Fair, where You held a debate that we followed with interest. You could then see with Your eyes that the Book Fair is a meeting point, where it is possible to let different ideas, positions, experiences face each other. The controversies which often accompany Your work did not affect the civil atmosphere in which the meeting took place, to Your satisfaction, we suppose.   

 

Every year the Fair hosts a Country coming to Turin to introduce its culture. This year it will be Israel’s turn. Egypt, with which we started positive relations, was initially scheduled to be guest in 2008, but then we commonly agreed to move its participation to 2009 just because in that year Turin will host important archaeological exhibitions, so that the various events can receive mutual strengthening, in a sort of year dedicated to Egypt.

 

Inviting Israel means to invite its writers, scientists, musicians, artists, film directors: nothing else. All independent personalities, not enslaved to any institution or government, but on the contrary, often critical – when not bitterly critical – voices. We suppose that You know and appreciate these personalities, who honour the world culture, and not only the Israeli one, and who face through willingness and passion the subject of comprehension of the other as a basic moment of contemporary life. We can confirm once again that Israel’s participation will have a strictly cultural character, so not a political, not a propagandistic and not a celebrative one.

The real guest of honour is then the free Israeli culture, because on culture and nothing else it is to be measured the honour of a Country. The recurring itself of the 60^th anniversary of the State foundation will be the occasion to review critically a complex and suffered history. During the 20 years of the Fair’s life, we never meant to celebrate something or somebody, but to try to understand, to know more through reflection, analysis, and the contribution of different voices; and many have been the Arab and Palestinian personalities hosted in Turin.    

It will be like that even this year, and it is hard for us to understand the position of some Arab writers, who refused the proposal to take part in the book Fair 2008 and invited to boycott the manifestation. The position of Aaron Shabtai, the Israeli writer refusing to participate in the Paris Salon du livre because convinced that his presence would figure as an endorsement of the policy of his government, is for us incomprehensible, too.   

 

It is not clear to us the link between politics and culture, when it is so roughly outlined. The reasons of literature and those of politics have always been deeply different and often radically conflicting. Politics think about the “here and now” while literature talks to men of all times and all Countries. It does not divide, but brings together.   

You talk about “conspiratorial silence of the international scene” about the facts of the Middle East, but we want so little to be associated to that silence that we put at disposal just a space in which opinions can freely confront one each other. We want to open and not close, censor, hide. It is even humiliating for us to be forced to repeat so obvious concepts.

We have no difficulty in admitting that our knowledge of these so tormented sixty years is only partial and incomplete. Don’t You think that the Fair 2008 could be just the occasion for a deeper knowledge? That participation and dialogue are better than silence, than wall against wall? And that the task of intellectuals is just to build bridges, to keep the discussion open? How can writers refuse to discuss with other writers from whom they are divided only by passport matters?

 

Dear Tariq Ramadan, we trust that the voice of the reason can be louder even in these so difficult moments, and we hope that the wide following of which You benefit can be useful to restore a better mood and to contribute to make the Turin Book Fair what it has always been: an open space where men of goodwill – authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, students, readers of every Country – try to build a better world through good books.