Transforming Literary Events into Pro-Arab Forums

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Big City Lit | February 2003

On Saturday, February 3, I had the supreme displeasure of attending a poetry event at the Poetry Project sponsored by Anne Waldman and Ammiel Alcalay, a professor of Hebrew Literature at Queens College.

Last fall, Professor Alcalay wrote to Campus-Watch.org to stand with radical colleagues who support violence against Israel. In a subsequent email correspondence with me, he denied supporting such people or acts. But his attitude was confirmed by his letter to the LA Times last year, his own words to me, and on Saturday. This man openly despises Israel.

I received his email invitation (with Ms. Anne Waldman, a fellow radical poet) to “Poetry is News: Operation Counter-Intelligence,” and sat in disbelief for four hours on Saturday afternoon as several speakers maligned Israel and (by extension) the Jewish people. Elias Khoury, for example, compared Israel’s siege of Ramallah to the Holocaust, and Israeli leaders to “tyrants and fascists.” (Alcalay said, “I cannot improve upon those remarks.”)

Elias Khoury is a far cry from the tolerant saint portrayed by Daniel Belasco in the Jewish Week last May, as a Lebanese novelist who, in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish and English, “invoked the hallowed name of Al-Andalus.” All peace and good, except that this member of the Institute for Palestine Studies is not a liberal, not a moderate, and hates Israel. No doubt, he also seeks its destruction, as does the Palestinian Authority, according to its current PLO charter and Fateh Constitution. Continue reading “Poetry is News: Operation Counter-Intelligence” →

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