A group of more than a thousand authors have launched an appeal to boycott Israeli publishers in light of the country’s assault on Gaza.
The letter, initiated by the Palestine Festival of Literate and signed by Nobel laureates and winners of the Booker, Pulitzer, and National Book Awards, said writers should end their relations with companies that are “complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and upholding apartheid and genocide.”
“The overwhelming majority of Israel’s publishing industry is silent on Israel’s pervasive practice of targeting Palestinian writers and scholars for death and persecution; silent on Israel’s destruction of Palestinian libraries, printers, and publishing houses; silent on Israel’s now widely-known practice of scholasticide, even as it continues to destroy Palestinian schools, universities, libraries, and archives,” reads the letter.
“In several cases there was not only silence, but support for the Israeli military’s actions.”
Among the signatories are Sally Rooney, Annie Ernaux, Owen Jones, Arundhati Roy, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Judith Butler.