Not kid stuff
A book by a 15-year-old girl on Palestine is causing a sharp outcry by anti-Semitism activists in France. Amina Elbendary reports
Intellectual and journalistic circles in France -- and to an extent in Germany -- have been up in arms protesting the publication of 15-year-old Randa Ghazy's book Rêver La Palestine [Dreaming of Palestine]. The book, aimed at young adults, deals with the frustrations and anger of young Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
The original Italian text, Sognando Palestina, was published in Italy last March, where Ghazy lives with her Egyptian parents, Ibrahim Ghazy and Sanaa Mohamed, and her sister and brother. The saga began when Ghazy wrote a short story for a competition. Upon winning first prize, she was encouraged by an Italian publishing house to develop her ideas into a novella. The book did not cause much protest in Italy where it has sold some 13,000 copies so far and is on its fifth reprint. It has already been translated to French, German and Norwegian. Officials at the Egyptian publishing house Dar Al-Shorouk confirmed to Al-Ahram Weekly that they have bought the Arabic rights for the book and will be publishing an Arabic translation shortly -- hopefully in time for the Cairo International Book Fair next month.
Yet last week Jewish and Zionist lobbies and pressure groups in France and Germany protested the publication of the French translation of the book by the French publishers Editions Flammarion as part of a series for adolescents. The organisations have called on the French government to order the withdrawal of the novel from circulation. Opponents argue that the novella, in which one of the characters blows himself up in the course of killing five Israeli soldiers, promotes anti-Semitism and hate and glorifies Palestinian suicide bombers who attack Israelis. They also complain that the language in the 207-page volume is inflammatory and reject its depiction of Israeli soldiers defiling mosques and raping Arab women.
Speaking (in Arabic) to Al-Ahram Weekly from her home near Milan, Randa Ghazy explained that her detractors had seized upon certain paragraphs in the book and read them out of context. "The novel talks about youth living in Palestine, but it's not true that it promotes violence. But there [in France] they take a single word from the book and say it encourages young people to kill themselves and so on. They take a word out of an entire book."
As Ghazy explains, Sognando Palestina "talks about young people living in Palestine and what happens there. It shows for example how they can't leave their homes [because of curfews] to go to work and live [a normal life]. Everyone in the story loses family members; for example, the character Ibrahim loses his father, Nidal, and his mother and sister. Everyone has a story of someone in their family having died in the war. Two or three of the characters join the resistance movement. And most of the friends die in the novel." Only Ibrahim, the main protagonist, remains alive at the end.
Although she has spent her entire life in Italy, Ghazy is well-informed about the Palestinian cause owing to her parents' efforts to teach her about the issue. "My father used to talk to me about the 1973 War and my mother also talked to me about the Arab-Israeli conflict, which encouraged me to study Palestine to learn exactly what happened there," she explained. Watching on TV footage of the atrocities committed against the Palestinians during the ongoing Intifada, including the brutal murder of Mohamed Al-Dorra, prompted her to learn more about the Palestinian question. "After I wrote the book I got to know many Palestinians and they all told me that it tells about things that actually happen in Palestine; they've lived there and know what it's like," she added.
The reception of the book in Italy has been more positive than that in France. In Italy it appears to have raised awareness among the general public about the Palestinian cause. Ghazy has been invited to speak on several television programmes and in public venues. Yet despite the relatively high sales and degree of publicity it generated, only two of Ghazy's classmates have read it. "They don't care much about the Palestinian cause and don't know what's going on there," she said.
The Los Angeles-based pro-Israeli Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) have variously asked for Flammarion to withdraw the book from circulation, for the Internet retailers Amazon France to remove it from its Web site, as well as for France's Interior Ministry to ban its circulation. Several dozen people also protested outside Flammarion's Paris offices last Tuesday.
William Goldnadel, a French lawyer and president of the group Lawyers Without Frontiers, told The New York Times he had asked France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, to take measures against the book under a 1949 law aimed at protecting minors, which prohibits any form of expression that promotes violence, crime and hate. He said he was awaiting the minister's response before deciding whether to take the case to court.
Meanwhile, Flammarion, France's third largest publishing house which is owned by the Italian publishing group Rizzoli Corriere della Sera, has defended the work. "At the end of the story, several of the protagonists in the book express a rejection of war and manage to overcome the prejudices that had locked them in personal distress," the publishers argued in a statement indicating that they would not withdraw the book from circulation. An executive at Flammarion told Reuters that Ghazy's book portrayed both extremists and moderates and therefore did not constitute an incitement to hatred and violence. This other side of the story has predictably been absent from Jewish organisations' protest statements. "The novel depicts Palestinian teenagers who fight 'bloodthirsty Jews who assassinate children and old people, profane mosques and rape Arab women'" -- is just one case in point.
"The publisher would like to point out, in a spirit of appeasement, that this is a work of fiction that should not be interpreted in ideological terms," said the Flammarion official, who asked not to be named. "I don't think the French publishers will remove the book, no," Ghazy added, "this is normal in France -- it often happens."
Elisa O'Neill, spokeswoman for the French division of Amazon.com told Reuters that though the company had received protest letters it did not plan to withdraw the book since it was not banned. French distributors FNAC are also following the same policy.
Two concurrent developments are worth mentioning. Flammarion is also the publisher of French writer Michel Houellebecq's controversial book Plateforme (The Platform). French courts have recently acquitted Houellebecq of inciting racial hatred after he called Islam "the stupidest religion" during an interview and have rejected a bid to ban the book La Rage et l'orgueil (Rage and Pride) by Italian author Oriana Fallaci in which she attacks Islamic fundamentalism and asserts that Muslims "multiply like rats".
The recent rulings could indicate that the French judiciary is standing by a strong tradition of freedom of expression. Whether these judicial authorities will act in a manner that is even-handed with respect to an Arab work will soon be evident with their decisions on the Ghazy case. Will freedom of expression be accorded to texts perceived as anti-Israeli in the same measure that such tolerance has been extended to texts viewed as anti-Muslim? Legal procedures aside, another question is whether publishers and book sellers will stand firm in the face of pressure by Zionist groups.
<http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/617/re11.htm> *****
Frank Bruni, "Dreaming of Palestine, Teenager Writes a Novel," _New York Times_ 28 December 2002, <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/28/international/middleeast/28FPRO.html>.
"Intervista a Randa Ghazy Scrittrice: 'Gli europei indifferenti davanti al dramma della Palestina,'" <http://www2.varesenews.it/articoli/2002/aprile/sud/4-4randa.htm>.
***** Titolo: Sognando Palestina Autore: Ghazy Randa Prezzo Sconto 20% EURO 7,20 (Prezzo di copertina EURO 9,00 Risparmio EURO 1,80) Dati: 216 p. Anno: 2002 Editore: Fabbri Collana: Contrasti
<http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1107&c=GHXXUAZO4YBAB> *****
***** Rêver la Palestine de Randa Ghazi, Anna Buresi (Traduction)
Notre prix : EUR 10,00 / 65,60 FF Disponibilité : 3 à 4 jours Livraison gratuite à partir de 20 euros (131 FF) d'achats (lire nos conditions) Broché - 206 pages (4 novembre 2002) Flammarion; (.) ; ISBN : 2081616262
<http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2081616262/qid%3D1041143225/171-4756643-9718625> ***** -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>