In the world of literature not getting a prize is often more of a star on the shoulder than actually getting one. Few would remember the winners of the Nelly Sachs prize, for example, but now everyone will remember that this is the prize Kamila Shamsie was not given due to her support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel. Legitimate criticism of the Israel project, too numerous to list here, is conflated with the worst excesses of anti-Semitism. Today, it is those on whom this brutal project was imposed that are told that their suffering is necessary to atone for the sins of Europe. It is now the city of Dortmund that will hold the prize for withdrawing an award from an accomplished writer, who has supported the Palestinian cause on humanitarian grounds. The Nelly Sachs committee has claimed that it had chosen Shamsie for the award for writing that ‘builds bridges’, but then withdrew it after learning of her support of the BDS movement.
What has been good to see is that the matter has brought out an often apolitical literary community around a political issue. More than 250 writers, including Arundhati Roy, J M Coetzee, William Dalrymple and Noam Chomsky, have come out in support of Kamila Shamsie. The list includes former winners of the Nelly Sachs prize. Sachs herself was a Jewish poet who had to flee Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime. If anything, it is important that writers who are advocates of suffering peoples are commemorated to stay true to the prize. The principle has been expressed much better in the open letter of protest written by the above-mentioned authors; the letter asks what the value of a literary award might be which undermines the advocacy of human rights and the freedom to criticise.
It is clear that the BDS movement is not based on anti-Semitism, but is in support of the right of the Palestinian people to a dignified life. The tactic is the same as the one used to fight apartheid in South Africa. The decision to withdraw the award is no doubt shameful, but it has brought attention to the shameful stiffing of pro-Palestine voices. You cannot fix one injustice by committing another one. Shamsie is on the right side of history. Germany and the Nelly Sachs foundation are not.