Letters: Ian McEwan can't escape the politics

We thank Ian McEwan for responding to our letter (Letters, 24 January), but we, the undersigned, must continue to express our profound disagreement with his decision to accept the Jerusalem prize. Courtesy does not oblige us to respect a decision that fails the Palestinian people by rejecting their call for an international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the Israeli state. BDS was launched by over 170 civil society organisations in 2005: after Susan Sontag and Arthur Miller received the prize.In reply to Ian McEwan's claim that literature transcends political considerations, we put three questions to him. First, as the prize is awarded by the Jerusalem municipality, isn't accepting it a fundamentally political action? Second, would he have accepted a prize funded by apartheid South Africa? And finally, isn't it now abundantly clear that the long slow process of "dialogue and engagement" with intransigent Israeli governments has only enabled them to tighten their stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank?Art, we believe, may change the hearts and minds of individuals; in the callous hands of politicians it is but a tin trophy. Boycott, however, worked in South Africa, and now our Israeli friends tell us BDS is forcing senior Israeli journalists and politicians to anxiously recognise the shift in world opinion against their country's decades of human rights abuses. Ian McEwan opposes the illegal settlements that may soon make an independent Palestinian state nothing but a ruined dream. Please, we ask him, do not co-author another disgraceful chapter in the west's ugly elegy to Palestine. Stay home and help to build a just Jerusalem at last!Rowyda AminJohn BergerProf Mona BakerNaomi FoyleFred JohnstonJudith KazantzisEleanor KilroyWendy KleinDiane LangfordDr Nur MasalhaChina MivilleDr Khadig! a Safwat Seni SeneviratneTom VowlerIrving WeinmanRobin Yassin-Kassab The attacks on Ian McEwan for accepting the Jerusalem prize are predictable but depressing. McEwan is a remarkable writer who actually examines events rather than responding to them with abusive slogans like many of his critics. The Jerusalem Prize for The Freedom of the Individual in Society (to give it its full name) is non-political and is a recognition of McEwan's consistent writing on the themes of human endeavour and freedom. He is a worthy successor to previous prizewinners such as Bertrand Russell, Octavio Paz, VS Naipaul and Mario Vargas Llosa.Jerusalem, almost alone in the Middle East, is a multi-faith society where all are free to practice their religions. Israel has far greater freedom of speech than any other country in the area. Ian McEwan will be welcome there whatever criticisms he makes of the government and its policies. That would not be true in most of the region.William ShawcrossLondon

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