A house in Kibbutz Nahal Oz after Hamas Attack – Photo by Kobi Gideon / GPO
More than 1,000 authors around the world have signed on to a new boycott campaign against Israel. Some people may be asking right ow, “so, what else is new?” Many more have probably never even heard of most of the writers who signed the letter released by this new Israel bashing campaign.
The authors opened their letter by saying that the world faces “the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st 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,” reads one ant-Israel letter posted on the website Literary Hub.
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In a “now they show their true colors moment, the signatories to the letter revealed their belief that Israel should not even exist by also writing, ”This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.”
The reference to 75 years refers to the years since Israel’s establishment at the time of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror massacre.
“Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices,” the letter adds. “Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and art washing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.”
Percival Everett, Sally Rooney, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kaveh Akbar, Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein, Téa Obreht, Peter Carey, Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Mary Gaitskill, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Justin Torres, Raven Leilani, Susan Abulhawa, Valeria Luiselli, Jia Tolentino, Ben Lerner, Jonathan Lethem, Hisham Matar, Maaza Mengiste, China Miéville, Torrey Peters, Max Porter, Miriam Toews, Leslie Jamison, Layli Long Soldier, and Ocean Vuong are among the authors who signed on to the campaign.
The authors said the 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:
