PEN American Center, which describes itself as “the US branch of the world’s leading international literary and human rights organisation,” has chosen to align, once again, with the government of Israel, one of the world’s most persistent abusers of human rights. It has accepted funding for the annual World Voices Festival from the Israeli embassy as part of the Brand Israel programme, a government pubic relations initiative launched in 2005 that uses cultural productions to distract from Israel’s well-documented and systematic destruction of Palestinian life.