Literary giants launch mass boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, pro-Israel groups decry ‘discrimination’

Over 1,000 writers, including winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award, launched on Monday a mass boycott of Israeli cultural institutions that have remained complicit in or silent observers of “the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”

In an open letter, Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rupi Kaur, William Dalrymple and Rachel Kushner, as well as prominent Pakistani authors such as Fatima Bhutto, Mohsin Hamid, Saba Imtiaz, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, and Kamila Shamsie, pledged not to work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications “complicit in violating Palestinian rights.”

Institutions that have never publicly recognised the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law,” or those operating “discriminatory policies and practices” or “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide,” will also be boycotted, according to the letter. The complete list of signatories can be found here.

Several attempts to discredit this mass boycott have been made since Monday. Initially, In response to the letter, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) — an association of lawyers supporting Israel — sent its own letter to the Society of Authors, the Publishers Association and the Independent Publishers Guild, calling the boycott discriminatory against Israelis. The UKLFI added that its members believe there are legal risks involved in participating in the boycott.

Omar Robert Hamilton, co-founder and current festival director of PalFest, said the UKLFI’s letter “is only notable for its moral bankruptcy and proves that Israel’s apologists have nothing to say,” per The Guardian.

Another open letter surfaced Tuesday. Signed by over 1,000 public figures, including authors and media personalities, it called out the “illiberal and dangerous” cultural boycotts against “the freedom of expression” of Israel.

The letter, issued by the nonprofit body Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), stated: “[This] letter comes in response to continued efforts to boycott, harass, and scapegoat Jewish and Israeli authors and literary institutions.”

Among the signatories of this letter are Lee Child (creator of the Jack Reacher novels), Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson, Pulitzer winner David Mamet, Nobel laureates Herta Müller and Elfriede Jelinek, historians Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, and entertainers Gene Simmons, Ozzy Osbourne and Debra Messing.

The letter read: “Regardless of one’s views on the current conflict, boycotts of creatives and creative institutions simply create more divisiveness and foment further hatred.” It called on “our friends and colleagues worldwide to join us in expressing their support for Israeli and Jewish publishers, authors, and all book festivals, publishers, and literary agencies that refuse to capitulate to censorship based on identity or litmus tests.”

The initial letter boycotting Israeli cultural institutes was part of a campaign organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature (also known as PalFest), an annual festival that includes free public events in cities across Palestine, alongside campaign groups Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine, Publishers for Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza and Fossil Free Books.

The initial letter highlighted that Israel has killed “at the very least 43,362” Palestinians in Gaza since October last year and that this follows “75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.”

Culture “has played an integral role in normalising these injustices”, it added. Israeli cultural institutions, “often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and art-washing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.”

The pledge declared that industry workers have a “role to play”, and cannot, “in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement.” The letter referenced the “countless authors” who took the same position against apartheid in South Africa and concluded with a call to other writers and editors to join the pledge.