An Open Letter to Irish Writers

international | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Tuesday June 08, 2010 15:12 by Fred Johnston sylfredcar at iolfree dot ie 087.2178138

John Berger and 30 other eminent writers have called for a cultural boycott of Israel. Apart from a marvellous poem by Richard Tillinghast published in The Irish Times, neither individual writers nor literary organisations in Ireland have uttered a word in the face of recent Israeli atrocities.

Letter in 'The Independent on Sunday'

Novelist Alice Walker and UK novelist Iain Banks are the latest eminent writers to make their protest plain in print. So why have the majority - the vast majority - of Irish writers remained silent? When Israel's Mossad used Irish passports and others to carry out an assassination in Dubai, we were silent. Nine Turkish relief activists are murdered by Israeli commandos on board a ship carrying supplies in flotilla to Gaza and still the literary silence here is deafening.
Not so in Britain, where writers even organise, the better to protest. Some days ago I asked The Irish Writers' Union, Aosdána, and Poetry Ireland to make a statement condemning the attack at sea. So far I have had no reply.
Have we as writers lost some vital quality of outrage? How, I would ask, is it deemed among a fair selection of British writers to be a duty to protest when injustice arises in the world, yet Irish writers flinch at the suggestion - and some grow quite indignant at the suggestion - that we too have this duty to protest? I do hope you will take a moment to read the attached letter. Sincerely,
Fred Johnston