Hundreds of Authors Pledge to Boycott Israeli Cultural Institutions

 

By Dan Sheehan

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October 28, 2024

Percival Everett, Sally Rooney, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kaveh Akbar, Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein, Téa Obreht, Peter Carey, Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Mary Gaitskill, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Justin Torres, Raven Leilani, Susan Abulhawa, Valeria Luiselli, Jia Tolentino, Ben Lerner, Jonathan Lethem, Hisham Matar, Maaza Mengiste, China Miéville, Torrey Peters, Max Porter, Miriam Toews, Leslie Jamison, Layli Long Soldier, and Ocean Vuong are among the hundreds of prominent authors who have signed an open letter pledging not to work with “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”

The letter (published in its entirety below) represents perhaps the most forceful statement of condemnation—and largest commitment to cultural boycott—ever made by the American literary community with regard to the Israeli cultural sector:

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.

We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.

The letter has been signed by multiple winners of, and finalists for, almost every major literary award in the world—from the Booker to the Pulitzer, the National Book Award to the Women’s Prize for Fiction—and closes with a call to action for all in the book world:

To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.
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Here is the letter in full:

We, as writers, publishers, literary festival workers, and other book workers, publish this letter as we face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century. The overwhelming injustice faced by the Palestinians cannot be denied. The current war has entered our homes and pierced our hearts.

The emergency is here: Israel has made Gaza unlivable. It is not possible to know exactly how many Palestinians Israel has killed since October, because Israel has destroyed all infrastructure, including the ability to count and bury the dead. We do know that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October and that this is the biggest war on children this century.

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.

We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

A) Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or

B) Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.

To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.

 

Initiating Signatories,

list   below 

https://lithub.com/hundreds-of-authors-pledge-to-boycott-israeli-cultural-institutions/