Turin book fair faces protests for honoring Israel

The Turin book fair opening on Thursday, like its Parisian counterpart in March, honors Israel on the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state's creation, sparking fresh Muslim anger and boycott calls.

Writer and Professor Tariq Ramadan on Monday criticized the planned presence of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at the fair, saying his attendance would make it "a political and not a cultural event."

Ahead of the five-day expo, several Muslim writers, intellectuals and artists as well as the Free Palestine association staged a two-day protest seminar at the University of Turin titled "Western Democracies and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine."

Free Palestine is also planning a protest on Saturday.

Security has been tightened for this year's event in Turin, coming two months after the Paris book fair which was inaugurated by Israeli President Shimon Peres and marred by a bomb threat that forced an hour-long evacuation of the venue.

Ramadan, who is backing the boycott calls, is the grandson of Hassan El-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Sunni Islamist movement.

He said last week that he would not "offer his support to 60 years of a policy of oppression of the Palestinian people."

Several Arab and Muslim countries and writers' groups boycotted the Paris book fair.

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization had called on its 50 member states to stay away, arguing that Israel's "crimes against humanity" in the Palestinian territories make it "unworthy" of such an honor.

Muslim critics say Israel should not be rewarded in this manner while it faces international outrage over its actions in the Palestinian territories.

Israeli poet snubs event

Every year as Israel celebrates its anniversary, the Palestinians remember the 700,000 or so of their fellow citizens who fled or were forced from their homes as the Jewish state was created and who, with their descendants, now form a UN-registered refugee population of more than 4.5 million.

Sixty years on, Israel and the Palestinians remain locked in a seemingly intractable conflict.

UN agencies say the Gaza Strip is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster as a result of a crippling blockade Israel has imposed on the impoverished territory since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power there last June.

In the occupied West Bank, construction of new homes for Jewish settlers in defiance of both international law and an internationally drafted peace plan has cast a huge shadow over a new peace push launched in November.

More than 300,000 people visited last year's book fair in Turin, to be attended this year by some 1,400 publishers, both Italian and foreign, which director Rolando Picchioni said was an "absolute record."

The boycott call is not all one-sided.

Acclaimed Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai snubbed Paris and will not attend the Turin event, telling counter-currents.org that they were "purely another occasion for Israel to make propaganda and gain more support for its military occupation" of the Palestinian Territories.