“Writing for peace doesn’t mean preaching brotherly love and pacifism, because preaching is more for warmongers. I don’t think we can afford to preach non-violence, because we end up talking to the self and finally get sent to the asylum.”
So contended Palestinian Arab author Sami El-Youssef to an audience of about 40 Nov. 14at Boswell Books on Milwaukee’s east side.
In a talk titled, “Writing for Peace,” El-Youssef spoke about his writing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, centering on the question, “Is it possible to find a middle ground — neither choosing a side nor claiming neutrality — in a new area called the politics of peace?” His remarks focused less on the Arab-Israeli conflict and more on the craft of a writer.
El-Youssef said, “You address your own community. You can urge your own people to sacrifice, but you can’t ask the other people to sacrifice.”
He contended that the author should not try to represent one side or another but to operate from behind the “veil of ignorance” American philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) discussed in his writings.
“Ideologies lose their glimmer, and you start to see common ground, humanity,” El-Youssef said.
El-Youssef used the example of “two snipers who spend twenty years shooting at each other over they forgot what. It is too tedious to talk about the cause of the war or to assign blame. It’s better to discuss shared memories.”
“I don’t want to go into the idea about a Jewish State,” he said. “What do you do? You might convince everybody that you’re right and they’re wrong. Then what? What are you going to do, continue fighting?”
The audience included Jews, Arabs, students from one teacher’s class, and at least one person who had read and wanted to discuss the author’s work and his response to other writers.
Several audience members, who expressed support for or identified themselves as Palestinians, took issue with his assertions about the impossibility of their cause.
He replied, “This is just anger. If you want to move on, you have to overcome your anger. Do you fight for the right to return or do you do what’s best for your children? Can you be brave enough to cut your losses and move on?”
El-Youssef is the winner of the 2005 PEN Tucholsky Award for promoting peace and freedom of speech in the Middle East. He was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon to a Sunni father and a Shi’ite mother and has made London his home since 1990.
He is the author of two novels about Israelis and Palestinians, “Illusion of Return” and “A Treaty of Love.” He collaborated with Israeli writer Etgar Keret on “Gaza Blues: Different Stories.”
He also has written numerous articles and book reviews that have appeared in The Guardian, the New Statesman, and a number of Arabic periodicals.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies sponsored the event, in conjunction with the Peck School of the Arts and the UWM English department. Stahl Center director Joel Berkowitz introduced the speaker, who had recently spoken at the University of Illinois.
El-Youssef writes in English, and his books have been translated into Hebrew, Italian, German, Norwegian, and Turkish. His works are available at Boswell Books.
Milwaukeean Susan Ellman, MLIS, has taught history and English composition at the high school level and is a freelance writer at work on a historical novel.
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