Jewish leader slams Arab writers' boycott

A Sephardi leader has slammed Arab writers for boycotting the Turin Book Fair, where the guest country is Israel, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. The move will only hold back Jewish-Arab dialogue - the key to an inevitable peace - he maintains.

"The Union of Arab Writers is falling into a trap which discredits it," David Bensoussan, President of the Communaute Sepharade Unifiee du Quebec, told Canadian Jewish News. " It is sad to see how far poisonous messages of hatred and disinformation about Israel and the West put out by the media have reached the intellectual classes. In a world of mass communications the Union wants to go back to the gagging era of the old totalitarianism."

Bensoussan was especially disappointed that Moroccan publishers were being discouraged from attending. "This boycott is happening at a time when we are trying to revive Jewish-Arab dialogue, and especially Jewish-Moroccan dialogue. Instead of going backwards, writers should be helping to get the Middle East out of its present stalemate."

Bensoussan has just visited Morocco for the first time in 40 years. He noted a sameness of attitudes, with extreme left-wing and marginal Jewish ideas in evidence in intellectual circles. "They do not ask the right questions, or wish confront the truth about Jewish-Moroccan relations in all their diversity, the good times as well as the bad. There should be no limits to freedom of thought."