More than 1,000 authors, publishers and literary workers have signed an open letter to boycott Israeli cultural and academic institutions that refuse to denounce Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people.
The letter, which organizers characterize as “the biggest cultural boycott against Israeli cultural institutions in history,” is signed by numerous Bay Area authors, including Judith Butler, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Malcolm Harris, Rachel Kushner and Robert Liu-Trujillo.
“We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” the letter reads. “This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.”
Signees of the letter include winners and finalists for nearly every major literary award, including the Booker Prizes, the Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award. Earlier this year, the organization PEN America canceled its ceremony after 9 of 10 award recipients withdrew over the group’s stance on Israel.
“Every writer wishes to be published everywhere,” said Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer-winning author who grew up in San José and graduated from UC Berkeley, in a statement. “But I have told my Israeli publisher that if they will not support the basic principles expressed in this letter — an end to complicity with Israel’s apartheid and full rights for Palestinians — I cannot approve the forthcoming publication of my book, The Refugees.”
The letter also invites others in the literary world to sign on, calling on “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.”
The letter and its list of signees can be viewed in full here.
