“However, I do not believe that a cultural boycott will force Mr Netanyahu from power, nor have I ever heard of a cultural boycott ending a bloody and prolonged conflict”, wrote the Harry Potter author.
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JK Rowling has said that the Cursed Child should be considered as the eighth story in her bestselling boy wizard series.
One Palestinian fan even compared it to something that would happen in the Harry Potter series, writing in an impassioned Facebook post: “The suggestion of dialogue is as absurd as an oblivious muggle who has no awareness or willingness to understand of the context between a death eater and muggle born”.
The best-selling children’s author was one of 150 cultural luminaries, including broadcaster Melvyn Bragg and historian Simon Schama, to sign a letter last week arguing that a cultural boycott of Israel will not help to bring peace in the region.
According to Entertainment Weekly, J. K. Rowling has responded to criticisms over her decision against joining a cultural boycott of Israel in a manner her fans know quite well: a preponderance of exposition involving Albus Dumbledore. By cutting off cultural ties with Israel, Rowling would be denying 8 million Israeli people the right to read her novels.
Brother James Sirius Potter was just publicly inducted into Gryffindor by Rowling on September 1, which further proved Rowling has been unable to leave the Potter saga completely closed. So though peace talks may not be in the near future between Israelis and Palestinians, at least both can continue to share in the magic of the wizarding world.
“Dumbledore is an academic and he believes that certain channels of communication should always remain open”, Rowling wrote today in a post on TwitLonger, a website that supports sharing longer messages on Twitter.
Tensions between Israel and Palestine appear to have heightened in recent weeks after a steady spate of knife attacks across Israel have led to fears of a possible third intifada. I want to see the Israeli government held to account for that injustice and brutality.
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Moreover, she recently tweeted, “The Palestinian community has suffered untold justice and brutality”. A cultural boycott places immovable barriers between artists and academics who want to talk to each other, understand each other and work side-by-side for peace’. “All books dealing with morality can be picked apart for those lines and themes that best suit the arguer’s perspective”, Rowling writes. Now, she says, “Nobody has ever asked me: why did Dumbledore go when Snape asked him to go, and why didn’t he kill him on sight when he got there?” Opposing the boycott, then, is exactly what Dumbledore, “the moral heart of the books”, would have done: “He did not consider all weapons equal and he was prepared, always, to go to the hilltop”.
