Edinburgh Error

The Bookseller reports that the Edinburgh International Book Festival has chosen to commemorate Israel's 60th anniversary by presenting a high-profile feature discussing the forced exodus of Palestinians in 1948.

The organisers are politically illiterate," said Colin Shindler, reader in Israeli and Modern Jewish Studies at London University. "The unsaid agenda is not to recall the Palestinian Nakba - a legitimate subject for discussion - but to underline the fact that the Jews really do not have a right to national self-determination in Israel. The festival's ‘outrage' is selective and they do a disservice to intellectual debate in this country”.