Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy and Rachel Kushner are among more than 1,000 writers and publishing professionals who have signed a letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that “are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians”.
Signatories to the pledge say they will not work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights”, including operating “discriminatory policies and practices” or “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide”.
Institutions that have never publicly recognised the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted.
The campaign was organised by the Palestine festival of literature (also known as PalFest), which runs an annual festival with free public events in cities across Palestine.
“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,” begins the statement, which goes on to say that Israel has killed “at the very least 43,362” Palestinians in Gaza since last October, and that this follows “75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid”.
Culture “has played an integral role in normalising these injustices”, it says. 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”.
Industry workers have a “role to play”, states the pledge. “We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” it reads, noting that “countless authors” took the same position against apartheid in South Africa.
The letter ends with a call to the signatories’ peers to join the pledge. It is supported by Fossil Free Books, a group which has campaigned against investments in companies linked to Israel and fossil fuels.
In response to the letter, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an association of lawyers supporting Israel, has sent its own letter to the Society of Authors, the Publishers Association and the Independent Publishers Guild. “This boycott is plainly discriminatory against Israelis. The authors do not impose similar conditions on publishers, festivals, literary agencies or publications of any other nationality,” the UKLFI alleged, adding 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 he believes the UKLFI’s letter “is only notable for its moral bankruptcy and proves that Israel’s apologists have nothing to say.”
Rooney, the author of Normal People and, most recently, Intermezzo, has long been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, and in 2021 refused to sell the Hebrew translation rights of her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, to an Israeli publisher.
Roy and Kushner are also vocal critics of Israel. Upon accepting the PEN Pinter prize earlier this month, Roy used her speech to discuss Gaza, and said that she would donate her prize money to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.