More than 1,000 of the world's authors have declared their support for a literary boycott of Israeli publishers "complicit in the dispossession of the Palestinian people." saying that they cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement.
"Authors have joined a campaign launched over twenty years ago by the absolute majority of Palestinian civil society including writers unions, trade unions, academics, and intellectuals, which have called for those working in cultural industries to refuse working with Israeli academic and cultural institutions that are complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and upholding apartheid and genocide," a website where a petition calling for a boycott, said.
The letter begins by accusing Israel of committing acts of injustice against the Palestinian people in the war in Gaza. "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."
"There is a genocide ongoing in Gaza; it is entirely straightforward to choose boycott over engagement when it comes to institutions that do harm to Palestinians," Pakistani-British writer and novelist, Kamila Shamsie said. "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 are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel's occupation, apartheid or genocide, or have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law."
Describing the Palestinians’ plight as 'the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century'. This ignores genocide in Sudan, ethnocide in Xinjiang, cannibalism in Congo, extermination in Ethiopia, mass murder in Nigeria and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar
The signatories base their death toll claim on information provided by Hamas. "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."
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote to the Publishers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Society of Authors and leading UK publishers, pointing out false allegations in the letter and the legal and reputational risks of participating in, assisting or supporting the discriminatory boycott.
The organization debunked some of the claims put forth by the largest literary boycott against Israel. "Describing the Palestinians’ plight as 'the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century'. This ignores genocide in Sudan, ethnocide in Xinjiang, cannibalism in Congo, extermination in Ethiopia, mass murder in Nigeria and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, amongst other terrible crimes around the world." UKLFI asl ostates the letter claimed that Israel made Gaza unlivable while over 2 million people live there.
"'Asserting that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October'. That figure comes from a Hamas-controlled ministry in Gaza, whose data has been shown to be fabricated and manipulated, and includes Palestinians killed by Palestinian fire, explosives and rockets, as well as over 17,000 Palestinian terrorists killed according to Israeli estimates." The letter also fails to include Hamas terrorists who are underage, adding them to the children's death toll.
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