Pulitzer and Booker Prize winners lead calls to boycott Israeli cultural institutions

More than 1,000 authors and publishers sign 'this is genocide' open letter

Pro-Palestine demonstrators in Berlin this month. Protests condemning Israel's attacks remain a fixture in many cities worldwide. EPA

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Pulitzer and Booker Prize winners are leading calls for global cultural institutions to boycott Israeli cultural institutions.

In an open letter signed by more than 1,000 global authors, publishers and artists, the international literary community has expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.

“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 open letter states.

Authors who have signed the letter include American-Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, whose biography The Return won a Pulitzer Prize; Percival Everett, known for his Booker Prize-shortlisted novels The Trees and James; Sally Rooney, whose novels Conversations with Friends and Normal People were adapted into hit TV series; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen; Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy; Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West; and Avni Doshi, whose novel Burnt Sugar was nominated for the Booker Prize.

“The overwhelming injustice faced by the Palestinians cannot be denied. The current war has entered our homes and pierced our hearts," the letter continues.

“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.”

The campaign was first organised by the annual Palestine Festival of Literature. Other institutions that have also been involved include Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine and Fossil Free Books.

Many authors with ties to the region have also signed the open letter. These include Susan Abulhawa, whose novel Mornings in Jenin is considered a seminal novel about the Palestinian experience; Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh known for her novels The Story of Zahra and Beirut Blues; Sudanese-Scottish novelist Leila Aboulela; and the Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd.

The open letter is one of the largest from the industry calling for a boycott.

“We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” the letter states.

“This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.”

The text then outlines that the signed authors will not work with Israeli cultural institutions, institutions, publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights” through policies and practices or by "justifying Israel's occupation, apartheid or genocide, or have never publicly recognised the rights of the Palestinian people".

The letter ends with a call to other writers and workers of the publishing and literary world to also sign the open letter.