Excerpt
02 September 2023
Dear President Magill et. al.,
It has come to our attention that individuals and organizations have been calling and writing to complain about the Palestine Writes Literature Festival to administrators at the University of Pennsylvania, including deans, the Provost, President, and some of the festival’s funders. One of those letters, a joint endeavor between the Jewish Federation and the ADL, was forwarded to us, along with an official response from the University, via Dean Steven Fluharty.
The letters are included in this document, here and here. While we are not surprised by such a campaign to discredit and denigrate us, we are compelled to respond. Our initial impulse was to do so in an open document, because, unlike our detractors, we do not operate in the shadows nor among elite decision makers and funders. Rather, we value transparency and public access, accountability, and scrutiny. We are also acutely aware of the power disparity between these highly funded, connected and organized Zionist organizations versus our small cultural institution run by volunteers and student organizations, most of them Penn students. And we know the heavy price that groups and individuals like us are forced to pay for daring to uphold or fight for the dignity, rights, and freedom of Palestinians, including loss of livelihood and persistent harassment, even loss of life, as in the case of Alex Odeh and countless Palestinians living under Israeli military rule.
Source:
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/palestine-writes-responds-to-racist-attacks/