Hazan, Eric 1936-

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Hazan, Eric 1936-

PERSONAL:

Born 1936, in Paris, France. Education: Holds medical degree.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Paris, France.

CAREER:

Publisher, editor, and translator. Director of Editions Hazan, Paris, France, 1983-98; founder and director, La Fabrique, 1998—. Worked as a volunteer doctor in Algeria and Lebanon.

WRITINGS:

L'invention de Paris: Il n'y a pas de pas perdus, Seuil (Paris, France), 2002.

Chronique de la guerre civile, Fabrique (Paris, France), 2003.

(With Mathieu Potte-Bonneville) Faire mouvement: Entretiens, Prairies Ordinaires (Paris, France), 2005.

LQR: La propagande au quotidien, Raisons d'Agir (Paris, France), 2006.

Notes sur l'occupation: Naplouse, Kalkilyia, Hébron, Fabrique (Paris, France), 2006, translated to English by George Holoch and published as Notes on the Occupation: Palestinian Lives, New Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Changement de propriétaire: La guerre civile continue, Seuil (Paris, France), 2007.

Contributor to Rester sur la montagne: Entretiens sur la Palestine, by Moustapha Barghouti, Fabrique (Paris, France), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eric Hazan, founder of the publishing company La Fabrique, has established a reputation as a voice calling for social justice, especially for France's formerly colonized populations and new immigrants. He has translated and published the works of dissident Palestinian and Israeli writers, and has written four books that, as described by a New Left Review writer, "attempt to recompose the totality which the operations of the liberal-democratic media work to disperse." Hazan exposes the racism and anti-Semitism within French culture, calling the injustices of the late twentieth century a "world civil war" with front lines everywhere.

Hazan's radicalism was formed by his early experiences. As a young medical student in France, he was a militant member of the Communist Party, but abandoned that affiliation because of the party's refusal to support anti-colonialist Arab militants in Algeria. Hazan went to Algeria when war broke out in 1962, working as a village doctor; eight years later, he helped establish the Franco-Palestinian Medical Association, volunteering his expertise in a refugee camp medical clinic near Beirut. Upon assuming directorship of his father's publishing company, Editions Hazan, in 1983, Hazan worked to promote political views that challenged established opinions about France's colonial history and, in the words of the New Left Review critic, "state coercion of the banlieue."

In Notes sur l'occupation: Naplouse, Kalkilyia, Hébron, translated by George Holoch and published in 2007 as Notes on the Occupation: Palestinian Lives, Hazan offers what a Kirkus Reviews contributor called a "much-needed perspective" on life in three occupied towns on the West Bank in the Middle East. In 2006, Hazan spent two months there, interviewing ordinary people whose comments he includes in the book. They speak of the extreme frustrations caused by the boycott against the Hamas government, and express anger at Israel. The Kirkus Reviews contributor observed that Hazan treats his material nonjudgmentally but tells a story that proves "deeply unsettling."

The book, according to Haaretz.com contributor Benny Ziffer, went almost unnoticed in Israel. Discussing the political reasons for this relative neglect, Ziffer observed that Notes on the Occupation offers a portrait of Palestinian families that is sympathetic and that highlights the injustices they experience under occupation. This view, the critic implied, differs markedly from mainstream Israeli attitudes and finds little, if any, official support in Israel. Comparing Notes on the Occupation to books by mainstream Israeli writers that "present a marvelous Israel, which may be tormented by the situation, but still forgives itself," Ziffer concluded that "this automatic forgiveness is not something you find in the books Hazan publishes."