In March, the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli will come to Kulturhuset in Stockholm. Her novel “An inconspicuous detail” is about a Bedouin girl who is raped and murdered by Israeli soldiers in the Negev desert in 1949.
In Germany, some have accused her of an anti-Semitic narrative. Adania Shibli was due to receive a prestigious literary award at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, but the award ceremony was cancelled.
Adania Shibli comes to Kulturhuset’s international writers’ stage, invited by writers Athena Farrokhzad and Ida Linde who are in charge of the program.
Kulturhuset’s calendar the next few months do not contain any Israeli authors, states the Israeli journalist David Stavrou who lives in Stockholm. In a debate post in SvD, he also points out that Athena Farrokhzad previously signed a summons that “we must refrain from Israeli participation in cultural exchanges” in connection with Eurovision in Israel 2019.
David Stavrou wrote his debate post after he tried in vain to get an interview with Athena Farrokhzad. In an interview, among other things, he had wanted to ask her if she still runs the same line as in 2019, but now in her work at the municipal Culture House.
“In other words: are Israeli writers now banned from the Kulturhuset? Will Stockholmers who are interested in meeting writers like David Grossman or Dorit Rabinyan not be able to do so anymore?”
David Stavrou also believes that Athena Farrokhzad compared the current conflict to the Holocaust, and that she is involved in what he interprets as anti-Semitic campaigns.
