DEFENDING her rejection of the Palestinian call to boycott Israel, JK Rowling responds to disappointed fans' comparison of Israel to the Death Eaters with her own Harry Potter analogy. She points to Dumbledore agreeing to a hilltop meeting with Severus Snape, at that time a follower of Voldemort's inhuman philosophy, and changing his ways through engagement and dialogue.
Mrs Rowling agrees that Harry Potter would have supported boycotting Israel. But, unlike wise Dumbledore, who took a leap of faith to dialogue with his enemy, the Harry of the first six and a half books is “reckless and angry”. Of course he has Mrs Rowling's “whole-hearted sympathy”, but he eventually must “stop and consider” Dumbledore's wisdom which runs counter to his beliefs. So presumably must supporters of the boycott, which “has its allure” in satisfying “the human urge to do something, anything, in the face of horrific human suffering”.
I would submit that the boycott actually satisfies the “urge” of Palestinians to survive. After seventy years of dispossession, exile, imprisonment and death at Israel's hands, both armed resistance and diplomacy have failed to secure their most basic rights. Their boycott campaign was launched after careful deliberation by a broadly representative coalition of Palestinian civil society groups. Its demands begin and end with their most basic rights, and are the unifying demands of their people.
Rejecting an oppressed people's call for solidarity as “reckless and angry” is the basest form of colonial patronising. In fact, Palestinians find themselves having to repeatedly explain their seven decades of suffering with limitless patience, requiring numerous citations from UN agencies and human rights organizations as well as Jewish support to even be heard, much less believed.
They are also forced to repeatedly explain basic aspects of their cause, such as the fact that the boycott absolutely does not forbid the kind of individual communication in which Dumbledore engages Snape on the hilltop. Exactly that engagement has persuaded Israelis and other Jews like myself to support the boycott. It's the kind of dialogue with which disappointed Palestinian fans like Mia Oudeh engaged Mrs Rowling, seeking humanity in a favourite author who is now running cover for the inhuman oppression their people face.
Wise Dumbledore and angry Harry would certainly both boycott Israel, because there cannot be remotely serious dialogue and coexistence when one party's humanity is denied.
Joel Reinstein
Ann Arbor, USA
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