Sally Rooney among 1,000 authors urging boycott of Israeli cultural institutions
Letter vows signatories won’t work with entities complicit in "overwhelming oppression" of Palestinians; Howard Jacobson pans "staggering" attempt to silence writers
Irish author Sally Rooney is among some 1,000 authors and literary professionals who signed a pledge to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported Monday.
Authors Arundhati Roy and Rachel Kushner also signed the letter vowing to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that “are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”
According to the report, the signatories pledge not to work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights,” including “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid, or genocide.”
The campaign was organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature.
Other leading authors panned the letter.
Booker Prize-winning author Howard Jacobson said he had “scarce belief that one writer, that one person from the artistic community, should dream that he or she has a right to silence another. It is staggering,” the UK’s Times newspaper reported.
Award-winning author Lionel Shriver charged that the letter aimed to “intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals,” the Times said.
Rooney is a long-time Israel critic who has refused to allow her Israeli publisher to translate her books into Hebrew.
UK Lawyers for Israel, a legal advocacy group, posted to social media platform X that the letter “makes false allegations against Israel and commits its signatories to engage in a discriminatory and illegal boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.”
In a missive to the Publishers Association, UKLFI said the letter is “plainly discriminatory against Israelis,” citing the UK Equality Act 2010 and other discriminatory legislation from around the world.
“This boycott is plainly discriminatory against Israelis. The authors do not impose similar conditions on publishers, festivals, literary agencies, or publications of any other nationality,” the UKLFI wrote.
The development came against the backdrop of the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, which began when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 people as hostages to Gaza.
Israel’s military response is aimed at destroying Hamas and saving the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques. PJC
comments