shows you how twisted the logic is

Its the Palestinians trying to annihilate Jews, not the other way around!!!!


By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: February 9, 2008
ROME — The selection of Israel as guest of honor at this spring’s International Book Fair in Turin has set off a furious debate among Italian, Israeli and Arab authors and intellectuals, including calls to boycott the event, Italy’s largest annual gathering of the publishing world.

Those opposed to the decision say that offering such an honor at a fair opening in May, when Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary as a nation, is to ignore its policies toward Palestinians.
“A prestigious event like the book fair can’t pretend it doesn’t know what’s happening in that part of the Middle East,” said Vincenzo Chieppa, a local leader of the Italian Communist Party, who was one of the first to raise objections to the selection of Israel.

Subsequent calls to boycott the fair — coming both from extreme-left-wing Italian political activists and prominent Italian and Arab intellectuals and authors — have prompted a wave of newspaper articles, some raising concerns about censorship and others extolling the need to place art above politics.

“The aim of culture and literature is not to build barriers among people, but to open up to others,” the novelist and playwright A. B. Yehoshua wrote on Monday in an op-ed article in the Turin daily La Stampa.

On Thursday some three dozen Italian intellectuals and artists sent a letter to the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, asking him to preside over the opening of the fair, which runs May 8 to 12, and to speak out “against any discrimination and blind intolerance towards the citizens and culture of Israel.”

The book fair, now in its 21st year, is not usually the setting for geopolitical strife.

“We’ve never had polemics before,” said Rolando Picchioni, president of Foundation for the Book, Music and Culture, which runs the fair. “Some years ago we honored Catalonian writers, and they essentially presented themselves as an independent state, but Spain didn’t protest.”

But it took little to fuel the controversy here, plunging the Middle East conflict into the Italian political debate, and splitting moderate and far-left political parties.

On Tuesday, for instance, a small group of protesters associated with a local pro-Palestinian group stormed the book fair offices in Turin, demanding that the invitation to Israel be rescinded.

“We are appalled to see the world of culture take the side of those who methodically operate to annihilate Palestine and the Palestinians,” read a pamphlet distributed during the demonstration.