{"id":2115,"date":"2016-05-28T10:15:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T08:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=2115"},"modified":"2016-05-28T13:19:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T11:19:29","slug":"j-m-coetzee-speaks-his-mind-on-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2016-05-28\/j-m-coetzee-speaks-his-mind-on-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"J M Coetzee speaks his mind on Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South African novelist and Nobel-laureate J M Coetzee rarely makes public statements, so it is great\u00a0to hear him speaking out on Palestine on Thursday night\u00a0in Ramallah at the close of\u00a0this year&#8217;s Palfest literature festival.<\/p>\n<p>Observing that it is not &#8220;a productive step&#8221; to compare Israel&#8217;s policies with those of apartheid South Africa, because it &#8220;diverts one into an inflamed, semantic wrangle&#8221;, he continues:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Apartheid was a system of enforced segregation based on race\u00a0or ethnicity put in place by an exclusive self-defined group in order to consolidate a colonial conquest, in particular to cement its hold on the land and its natural resources.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To speak of Jerusalem and the West Bank, we see a system of enforced segregation based on religion and ethnicity put in place by an exclusive self-defined group to consolidate a colonial conquest, in particular to maintain, and indeed extend, its hold on the land and its natural resources.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Draw your own conclusions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uDUnimxSAyk?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>CORRECTION<\/strong>: My original transcription of Coetzee&#8217;s\u00a0quote on apartheid wrongly referred to &#8220;religion and\u00a0ethnicity&#8221;, and has been changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African novelist and Nobel-laureate J M Coetzee rarely makes public statements, so it is great\u00a0to hear him speaking out on Palestine on Thursday night\u00a0in Ramallah at the close of\u00a0this year&#8217;s Palfest literature festival. Observing that it is not &#8220;a productive step&#8221; to compare Israel&#8217;s policies with those of apartheid South Africa, because it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":{"0":"post-2115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-israel-apartheid"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}