JAIPUR: The 18th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s largest literary event, began on Thursday with a special focus on the history and present-day situation in Gaza and Palestine.
Known as the “greatest literary show on earth,” the five-day event is held in Jaipur, the capital of the northwestern state of Rajasthan, bringing to one venue dozens of leading voices from literature, politics, science and the arts from India and abroad.
More than 400,000 people attended the event last year and organizers expect even more to show up this time.
Many of the festival’s sessions will be devoted to Gaza, covering events there during the past 18 months of relentless Israeli attacks that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure.
“What’s happening in Gaza is, in my opinion, the most appalling moral issue of our time and I’m very proud that we are giving this issue the prominence it deserves, and I think in a way that many Western literary festivals might be nervous to do. We are in a position in this country to speak frankly and openly about the horrors coming out of Gaza, and we intend to do so,” Scottish historian and writer William Dalrymple, one of the JLF’s directors, told Arab News.
Among the speakers will be Pankaj Mishra, the Indian novelist and essayist whose latest book, “The World After Gaza,” is a reckoning with Israel’s latest war on the enclave, its historical context and geopolitical ramifications.
Pankaj will be joined by Palestinian writer and lawyer Selma Dabbagh to discuss how the war — which brought Israel to trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice and has led to International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant — challenges understandings of justice and decolonization.
In another session, Nathan Thrall, an author and journalist known for his 2023 nonfiction work “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” who has covered Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, will speak about the human impact of Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people.
“It’s really an extraordinary lineup. We’ve got Gideon Levy from Haaretz — one of the most outspoken anti-Netanyahu journalists from the Israeli media — speaking in several sessions. I think he’s the bravest Israeli journalist of the lot, and the most outspoken on the horrors,” Dalrymple said.
Levy will speak about the unprecedented loss of civilian life in Gaza during the latest war and how it is likely to impact the future of the region.
Avi Shlaim, emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, will be talking about his memoir, “Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab Jew,” which “exposes Mossad operations, which tried to get the Jewish community in Iraq to leave through false flag operations, bombing synagogues and so on,” Dalrymple said.
“Then we have Philippe Sands, a very important international lawyer, who was strongly involved in the International Court of Justice case.”
For Dalrymple, who has spent many years reporting from and writing about the Middle East, raising the issue of Palestine as someone who knows the region also comes with a sense of responsibility. The subject and “the historical background of the terrible injustices which are taking place” are “often badly misrepresented,” he said.
“I have a duty to share what I know with those that are often misled and misguided about what’s happening ... people are seeing a lot on their social media but often they don’t have the education in the history and the politics to make sense of it all.”
Most of the people who will come to the festival may not have a thorough understanding of what is happening, but they can easily gain it by taking part in the event.
“Sometimes there isn’t as much knowledge and as much understanding of the issue, which is why people come to literary festivals. Not everyone in the modern world has time to read 300-page books on the history of Palestine but you can attend very easily a 50-minute session with experts summarizing it,” Dalrymple said.
“Literary festivals in the West are often scared of bringing this up and we’ve seen many examples of sessions on Palestine canceled in venues in the West. For example, when Pankaj Mishra was trying to speak on the same subject which he’s speaking with us, his session was famously canceled at the Barbican last year. So, he’ll be having with us the session that was censored in London ... we pride ourselves on the freedom with which our authors will be able to talk about all these things.”
