Hundreds of writers, editors and other publishing workers have signed a public letter saying they will not work with “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of crushing oppression of the Palestinians.”
Authors such as Michelle Alexander, Fatima Bhutto, Judith Butler, Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Marilyn Hacker, Naomi Klein, Owen Jones, Valeria Luiselli, Carmen Maria Machado, Hisham Matar, China Miéville, Pankaj Mishra, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tea Obreht , Max Porter, Casey Plett, Derecka Purnell, Sally Rooney, Jacqueline Rose, Arundhati Roy, Cecilia Vicuña and many others signed the document, in the face of “the deepest moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century”.
Faced with this crisis, the authors believe they have a role to play: “We cannot, in good conscience, engage with Israeli institutions without questioning their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” they assert in the letter, recalling that “this was the position”. adopted by countless authors against South Africa; This was his contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.
In the text they establish the following:
We will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the crushing oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions, including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:
- Are complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by covering up and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide.
- They have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people enshrined in international law.
Working with these institutions does a disservice to Palestinians, which is why we ask our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this commitment. We ask our editors, writers and agents to join us in taking a stand, recognizing our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and stopping collaborating with the Israeli state and complicit Israeli institutions.
The signatories justify the position taken by the war in Gaza, in which “it is not possible to know exactly how many Palestinians Israel has killed since October 2023, because Israel has destroyed all infrastructure, including the ability to count and ‘bury the dead’. According to local authorities, more than 43,000 Palestinians have died in just over a year, including more than 17,000 children.
Here is how they argue:
This is a genocide, as eminent experts and institutions have been declaring for months. Israeli officials speak candidly about their motivations for eliminating the population of Gaza, making the creation of a Palestinian state impossible, and seizing Palestinian land. All this after 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Culture has played a vital role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have played a crucial role in covering up, disguising and erasing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.
