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Israeli Anger at Nobel Laureate’s Comparison of Palestine to Nazi Camps
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| “What is happening in Palestine is a crime that we can stop,” said Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago (bottom right). |
JERUSALEM,
March 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - "What must be done
is to ring all the bells of the world to say that what is happening in
Palestine is a crime that we can stop. We can compare it to what
happened in Auschwitz," said 1998 Nobel laureate Jose Saramago
during his visit to Palestine, Agence France Presse reported.
Saramago’s
remarks were met by an angry response from Israeli author Amos Oz in
the Israeli daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, who wrote “the
author of Blindness demonstrated a terrible moral blindness. He who
does not distinguish between various degrees of evil becomes the
servant of evil.”
Though
Oz admitted to the negativities of the Israeli occupation, according
to Agence France-Presse (AFP), he remarked that "anyone who
compares the wrongs of occupation to the Nazi crimes is actually
calling for Israel to be dealt with in the same way that the allies
dealt with the Nazis -- to destroy them.”
An
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman claimed Saramago had "fallen
into a Palestinian propaganda trap,” the AFP quoted.
Saramago
told reporters through interpreters: "From the point of view of
the army, the Israeli occupying army, Ramallah is a barracks and you
are imprisoned in this barracks."
Saramago
was part of a delegation sent by the International Parliament of
Writers (IPW) to the occupied territories in Palestine between 24-29
March, not only in a show of support to the Palestinians but also to
meet Palestinian and Israeli writers, actors and actresses, and
representatives of civil movements fighting for peace.
Among
the delegation, eight members were Nobel laureates such as Nigerian
writer Wole Soyinka and the American Russel Banks. Christian Salmon of
France, Breyten Breytenbach of South Africa, Bei Dao of China and
Vincenzo Consolo of Italy were also part of the delegation.
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