States, writers and boycotters

One of the speakers in this Intelligence Squared debate that I attended last October was Tariq Ramadan. Apart from being unimpressed with the quality of his arguments generally, I found especially notable his seeming lack of any analytical capacity. So it's not altogether surprising to see how he has responded to criticism of his recent call for a boycott of the Turin Book Fair. To honour the 60th Anniversary of Israel's statehood the organizers of this event invited Israeli novelists David Grossman, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and Etgar Keret. Criticized over his call for a boycott, Ramadan wrote:

The boycott campaign is intended as criticism of the "guest of honor." It is not an attempt to prevent Israeli authors from attending or from expressing themselves.

You see: the boycott is aimed at Israel, not at Israeli writers - though its a book fair and the mode of honouring Israel is through its writers. It's not a difficult point to understand - unless, perhaps, you're just of a mind to lump everything together: Israeli policy, its very existence as a state, and its writers.

The French-Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jalloun has come out against Ramadan's boycott call. I wonder if Ramadan had any worries about the Arab League being guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2004. Actually, I don't wonder.