British-Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif has withdrawn from the Goethe Institute’s conference, which is scheduled to be held in Hamburg last this week, to protest the organisers’ act of disinviting Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd.
“Withdrawing from Goethe Institute’s Hamburg conference where they first invited and then disinvited Palestinian journalist and poet Mohammed El-Kurd. [The] reason is even more offensive. Apparently Kurd is not respectful enough towards Israel,” Hanif said in a tweet today.
He further said: “Mohammed El-Kurd’s house was taken over by settlers when he was eleven. Kurd and his sister Muna have been protesting since they were children. [I] have not read much [about] Goethe but I do not think he wanted the world to be respectful towards a ruthless apartheid regime.”
He also attached a link to read Kurd’s poetry collection and asked the public to decide who is being “disrespectful” in this case.
Earlier on June 17, the institute had said: “After some consideration, the Goethe Institute decided that Mohammed El-Kurd was not an appropriate speaker for this forum. In previous posts on social media, he had made several comments about Israel in a way the Goethe Institute does not find acceptable.”
The conference will focus on the impact of far-right movements and their global entanglements.
