Israel has contributed money to PEN American Center’s World Voices Festival to help pay for expenses related to invited Israeli writers. Unsurprisingly, this has sent Alice Walker and 100 other writers into a tizzy: "As a PEN member, I want this organization that is supposed to be a champion of writers' rights 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. The last thing PEN should be doing is partnering with and promoting a government that denies Palestinians basic human rights."