New Delhi: Sally Rooney, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Susan Abulhawa and Ocean Vuong are among the hundreds of prominent authors who have signed an open letter against Israel’s ongoing violence in Gaza and pledged to boycott Israeli cultural institutions.
Referring to the situation in Gaza as a genocide, the letter spells out the role of these institutions in “obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.”
“We will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians,” the letter read.
Signatories of the letter include winners of, and finalists for, prestigious literary awards like the Booker, the Pulitzer and the National Book Award to the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
The writers have called upon the literary community to join them in their pledge to boycott publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications complicit in the genocide.
“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,” it read.
The letter is produced in full below alongside the first few signatories.
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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.
Signatories:
Taiba Abbas
Idil Abdillahi
Omar Abed
Jordan Abel
Aria Aber
Alex Abraham
George Abraham
Susan Abulhawa
Maan Abutaleb
Samuel Ace
Tendayi Emily Achiume
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Zena Agha
Silvia Aguilera
Amna A. Akbar
Kaveh Akbar
Ammiel Alcalay
Michelle Alexander
Kazim Ali
Yassin Alsalman
Hanan Al-Shaykh
Hatem Aly
Suad Amiry
Tahmima Anam
Anthony Anaxagorou
Chris Andrews
Sinan Antoon
Raymond Antrobus
Gina Apostol
John Manuel Arias
Mirene Arsanios
Makram Ayache
Jennifer Baker
Nikkitha Bakshani
Ibtisam Barakat
J. Mae Barizo
Tim Barker
Lana Bastasic
Rim Battal
Alyssa Battistoni
Richard Beck
Laura van den Berg
Franco Berardi Bifo
Bennet Bergman
David Bergen
Chase Berggrun
Sarah Bernstein
Omar Berrada
Marie-Helene Bertino
Fatima Bhutto
Rose Biggin
Maya Binyam
Grace Blakeley
Nicholas Blincoe
Lindsey Boldt
Katie Bradshaw
Solomon Brager
Dionne Brand
Victoria Brittain
Jericho Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Simone Browne
Natascha Bruce
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Judith Butler
Anthony V. Capildeo
Tice Cin
Jo Blair Cipriano
Jade Chang
Jos Charles
Amit Chaudhury
Cathy Linh Che
Alexander Chee
Anelise Chen
Lisa Hsiao Chen
Selim-a Atallah Chettaoui
Anne Chisholm
Mona Chollet
Gina Chung
Susannah Clapp
Eliza Clark
Mark O’Connell
Rachel Connolly
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Jonah Corne
Rio Cortez
Glen Coulthard
Molly Crabapple
Doreen Cunningham
Sarah Cypher
Selma Dabbagh
Alain Damasio
Danielle Davis
Siddhartha Deb
Michael DeForge
Junot Díaz
Natalie Diaz
Ted Dodson
Lisa Duggan
Cyrus Dunham
Natalie Dunn
Martin Edmond
Ben Ehrenreich
Tala El-fahmawi
Yara El-Ghadban
Mohammed El-Kurd
Inua Ellams
Yasmin El-Rifae
Mercedes Eng
Nick Estes
Diana Evans
Percival Everett
Eve L. Ewing
