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Juan Goytisolo pays tribute to Mahmoud Darwish

March 16, 2011
This week, Spanish author Juan Goytisolo received the second annual Mahmoud Darwish prize at Birzeit University, outside Ramala (Palestine). This award is given to authors from all over the world which have contributed to Palestinian cultural life. On 13 March, the great Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish would have been seventy years old.

Juan Goytisolo was the winner of Spain's 2008 National Prize for Literature and is known in the Arabic reading world for his support of Arab culture and his rejection of the Gaddafi International Award for Literature.

According to Spanish newspaper El País, Goytisolo, upon receiving the award, said:

“Indeed, Darwish's poetry also addressed the Israelis with a sense of justice to remind them that the Holocaust does not justify the continued humiliation of Palestinians or condemning them to live on their own land under an apartheid regime which violates all UN Security Council resolutions and international laws in its foundational text.”

And that Darwish was:

“ . . . the voice that can express clearly and beautifully the brutality of the occupying force as well as the disloyalty of those who abandoned the project of democratization of Arab societies and used the defeat of this alleged holy cause to satisfy their craving for power and to settle scores with rivals.”

Read Goytisolo’s speech or the original article from El País (in Spanish).
Source: www.elpais.com
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