WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Zionist regime, has won the prestigious 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature.
French novelist Annie Ernaux, 82, is a long-time critic of the occupying regime and has signed a number of letters denouncing the occupation regime over its apartheid practices and crimes against Palestinians.
Her most recent public support came last year following the regime’s brutal crackdown on Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Al-Quds followed by an 11-day bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip. The Zionist regime killed at least 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women and 17 elderly people during the bombardment.
Ernaux signed a letter headed “Letter against apartheid: in support of the Palestinian struggle for decolonization”. The signatories said that it was “wrong and misleading” to present the occupying regime’s onslaught on Gaza as a war between two equal parties: “Israel is the colonizing power. Palestine is colonized. This is not a conflict, but rather apartheid.”
They mentioned the near universal consensus about the Zionist regime’s practice of the crime of apartheid. “The world is finally starting to call the Israeli system by name,” they added, citing reports from various human rights groups including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Showing solidarity with the BDS movement, in 2019 Ernaux signed a letter calling on a French state-owned broadcasting network not to air the Eurovision Song Contest, which that year was being held in the occupied territories. A year earlier, she signed a letter opposing the establishment of a season of cultural events by France and the Zionist regime to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the occupation regime. Both of these letters accused the regime of using cultural events to whitewash its crimes against Palestinians.
Ernaux joins the likes of Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell as winners of the coveted prize and her victory has sparked excitement in the world of art and literature. Articles across all major news agencies have hailed the professor’s work except, that is, those in the Israeli-occupied territories.