Toni Morrison on Palestine: "A Letter from 18 Writers"
Photo: Toni Morrison. 1977. Helen Marcus/Contact Press Images.
By Black Women Radicals
Toni Morrison was one of 18 writers who signed a letter in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Toni Morrison, one of the most celebrated and critically acclaimed authors of our time, was one of 18 writers who co-wrote and signed a letter as a call to resist Israel's undeclared political aim: the liquidation of the Palestinian state.
The letter, which is titled, “A Letter from 18 Writers” was published on August 18, 2006 in The Nation and was a part of the magazine’s August 28, 2006 Print Issue.
The letter reads:
The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner–and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis–there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
That this “kidnapping” was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources–most particularly that of water–by the Israeli Defense (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly–who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear, for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognized for what it is and resisted.
PS: As Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the documentary film Arna’s Children, asked: “Who is going to paint the ‘Guernica’ of Lebanon?”
John Berger Noam Chomsky Harold Pinter José Saramago Eduardo Galeano Arundhati Roy Naomi Klein Howard Zinn Charles Glass Richard Falk Gore Vidal Russell Banks Thomas Keneally Chris Abani Carolyn Forché Martín Espada Jessica Hagedorn Toni Morrison
Source: “A Letter from 18 Writers”, The Nation. August 18, 2006, and as seen in The Nation’s August 28, 2006 Print Issue.
