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La Fabrique is a small press founded eleven years ago by Eric Hazan, heir of the famous Hazan art press, former Communist and present champion of Israeli “dissidents,” author in his own right, political activist and champion of the Palestinian cause. Dissident also from the capitalist glitz of the annual Paris Book Fair, La Fabrique decided to make an exception this year and set up camp in the djebel of a small stand from which to resist against Israel, the honored guest. Muslim publishers, countries, and individual writers courageously boycotted the Fair to protest Israel’s honored presence. While Israeli writers reveled in attention in the spacious tent of honor, La Fabrique stood firm in a tiny stand decorated with large format photos of Palestinian suffering.

Devoid of all outward signs of affiliation, I slip into post-Zionist territory just as an editor emerges from her cubbyhole office in a corner of the stand. “I snuck a smoke,” she says, unapologetically. After all, when you have the courage to face down Israeli tanks you’re not going to be intimidated by a puny little no-smoking law. The odor of tobacco mingles with the stale smell of unwashed militant. Dressed in nondescript faded black, with a colorless face and droopy hair, she’s several steps below what we would call a plain Jane.

My opening question turned out to be a stroke of luck: I asked if La Fabrique [the Factory] was a sort of worker’s press. It made me sound naïve, and gave my hostess the opportunity to fill me in on Eric Hazan’s professional itinerary. The art press he inherited from his father ran into financial problems. He had to sell it. When he started his own publishing house he naturally gravitated toward dissident Israeli writers because he used to be a heart surgeon, and often went to operate on children in Palestine. In addition to the Palestinian current, la Fabrique publishes 19^th and 20^th century political texts and books about current issues in French society, primarily concerning immigration, discrimination, poverty, etc. La decadence sécuritaire exposes the scandal of police control of the judiciary. Les Filles voilées parlent is a collection of testimonials from young women in hijab who are victims of insults, attacks, and discrimination since passage of the 2004 of the law prohibiting the veil in schools and public administrations. A “racist anti-Oriental” law, says the valiant editor.

She replies with vague generalities to my questions about the photos that Eyal Sivan offered for the stand. There are no legends. And that’s the point. Checkpoint, rubble, wall, hole in the wall = Palestinian suffering inflicted by Israel. Where? When? Why? Doesn’t matter. She is a bit more expansive on the hole-in-the-wall photo. Israeli soldiers smash holes in the walls and walk from house to house instead of passing through the streets where the militia is waiting for them.

None of the 39 officially invited Israeli writers defend the Palestinians, she says. At least not on the same basis as La Fabrique writers. None of them accepted the invitation to participate in a debate that evening on the New Historians. In the seventies, she informs me, Israeli society was more open-minded. But that ended after the 2^nd Intifada. Since then Ilan Pappe has been blackballed.

“Why do you think it ended after the 2^nd Intifada?”

“I have no idea.”

“What do you think of the…the attack in Jerusalem?”

She looks me straight in the eye and says “It had to be expected. After what they did in Gaza… If I lived there…I would be more in favor of attacks like that…than negotiations. They get nowhere with negotiations. Ilan Pappe was going to come to the Book Fair but he changed his mind because of what happened in Gaza.” Pointing to a photo of a house in ruins she says “When you do that to people, you should expect to be attacked.”

She assures me that all of Gaza is in ruins like that photo. Maybe a few houses are intact, for the nomenklatura. The rest is rubble. Eighty of the 120 killed were civilians. Asked for her source she says she thinks those are official Israeli army figures.

While we are talking, two fans who look like they are on a furlough from an old folk’s home visit the stand. Later an activist comes to get more tracts to distribute. The editor tells him he is attracting lots of visitors to the stand. The tract is plain pipe rack stuff, printed under the featureless letterhead of the Union Juive Française pour la Paix. The UJFP has been particularly active since the “Al Aqsa Intifada.” It seems that there is actually one Jew in this French Jewish Union for Peace.

The tract asks how the State of Israel can be the guest of honor, on the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of its creation, which is the 60^th anniversary of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, an unmitigated uninterrupted catastrophe, a war, an occupation, merciless repression... The UJFP and la Fabrique are not here to participate in this shameful Fair but to resist, and to raise voices calling for recognition of the Other.

I couldn’t stay for the debate on 20 years of New History, featuring Alain Dieckhoff, Amira Hass, Ilan Pappe (cancelled), Avi Shlaim, Idith Zertal, and Michel Warschawski, and moderated by Dominique Vidal of le Monde Diplomatique.

Earlier in the week Amira Hass, Yael Lerer, Warschawski, Amnon Raz Krakotskine, and Jamal Zahalka took part in a round table discussion on the statute of intellectuals in Israeli culture at the prestigious Sciences-Po (Political Science Institute) under the auspices of its Middle East Chair.

La Fabrique list includes among its illustrious authors: Marwan Barghouti, Norman Finkielstein, Rashid Khalidi, Jacques LeGoff, Tanya Reinhardt, André Schiffrin, and Eyal Weizman. The most intriguing title—Le nouveau philosémitisme européen et le « camp de la paix en Israel » [the new European philosemitism and the Israeli “peace camp”]-- by Yitzhak Laor, is not listed as fiction.

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