Ian McEwan (2009). Photograph © Phillip Hollis.You may like Ian McEwan and his fiction or not. I really have no opinion on that matter. But I do very much like his approach to receiving the Jerusalem Prize tomorrow. He has rebuked those who call for an intellectual and cultural boycott of Israel even as he frankly criticizes the deep and abiding horrors of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. You can read about his trip to Israel for the Prize ceremony here in The Guardian. I have posted here repeatedly about the folly of boycotts - in Israel specifically but elsewhere too. Politics is about arguing and that is what we ought to be doing. It seems to me that McEwan gets that.
