Anti-occupation NGO gains donation from Israeli win of Man Booker prize
JERUSALEM: An Israeli human rights group disliked by the government welcomed Thursday the donation of prize money from the Man Booker International Prize won by David Grossman.
The Israeli writer won the prize on Wednesday evening for his novel “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” along with his US translator Jessica Cohen, with the two splitting the £50,000 ($64,000, €57,000) award.
Cohen announced at the awards she would donate “half of the award money” to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which campaigns against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
“For almost 30 years now they have been reporting on human rights violations committed in the occupied Palestinian territories,” she said.
“It is not easy to tell uncomfortable and unflattering truths, and it’s certainly not easy to hear them, but it is essential, not only in literature but in life.”
B’Tselem spokesman Amit Gilutz welcomed the donation.
“We are thankful to her and we are determined to continue on our mission, which is to resist the occupation until it ends,” he told AFP.
Grossman, the first Israeli to win the prize, is a member of the NGO’s public council but told Israeli army radio Thursday he was wary of being a representative of any particular cause.
The book unfolds over the course of a stand-up show during which comedian Dovelah Gee exposes a wound he has been living with for years and the difficult choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him.
“Thank you all. I will cherish this award and this evening,” Grossman said after receiving the prize at a ceremony in central London.
Since he started writing in the late 1970s after being fired from public radio following anger over his critical coverage, Grossman has won numerous awards.
His works include “The Yellow Wind,” a prescient, non-fiction look at Israel’s occupation ahead of the first Palestinian intifada that erupted in 1987.
His 2008 novel “To the End of the Land,” published after the death of his son Uri, contemplates the effects of war while portraying Israeli life.
In 2011 he was part of a group of seven prominent writers from around the world to appeal to the UN Security Council to sanction the Syrian government over its actions in the civil war which began that year.