Rupi Kaur, Sally Rooney and Judith Butler join boycott of 'silent' Israeli cultural institutions
Nobel Prize-winning authors Annie Ernaux and Abdulrazak Gurnah are among hundreds of writers, publishers and other book workers who have pledged not to work with Israeli cultural institutions that are "silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians".
In an open letter, organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) and published on Monday, the signatories said: "We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement."
This includes institutions that have "never publicly recognised the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law".
Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People, signed the letter, as did popular poet Rupi Kaur, who originally published her work on Instagram.
Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and prominent Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd are also among the signatories.
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'We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement'
- Palestine Festival of Literature
The letter, which denounced Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide, read: "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."
Other signatories include Jhumpa Lahiri, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000, and Kamila Shamsie, winner of the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Bestselling historian William Dalrymple also signed the letter, as did journalists Owen Jones, Afua Hirsch and Pankaj Mishra - and academic Judith Butler.
Divisions in the publishing world
"Culture has played an integral role in normalising these injustices," the letter read.
"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."
UK Lawyers for Israel, a legal advocacy group that is challenging the UK government over its partial suspension of arms sales to Israel, has sent a separate letter to trade bodies and publishers, claiming that the "boycott is plainly discriminatory against Israelis".
The last few months have seen sharp divisions in the publishing world over Israel's war on Gaza.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) ended a 20-year partnership with asset management firm Baillie Gifford in May, following pressure from activists over its ties to Israeli technology and military companies.
That same month the UK's Society of Authors, the country's largest trade union for writers, illustrators and translators, narrowly voted to reject a resolution supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.
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