Talk about perverse: The authors’ wing of the boycott-Israel movement has its panties in a knot over the Israeli Embassy’s support for this month’s PEN World Voices Festival here in the city.

PEN is an association of literary types; the protesters include Pulitzer-winning novelists Alice Walker, Richard Ford and Junot Díaz. But what’s truly bizarre is their gripe.

Walker complains that PEN is failing to stand up for “Palestinian writers, academics, and students who are suffering under a repressive Israeli regime that denies their right to freedom of expression.”