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Over 1,000 authors including Sally Rooney sign ‘discriminatory’ boycott letter
UK Lawyers for Israel claimed similar anti-Israel boycotts have faced legal action
October 28, 2024 15:48
UK Lawyers for Israel claimed similar anti-Israel boycotts have faced legal action
October 28, 2024 15:48Over 1,000 authors have signed an open letter accusing Israel of genocide and calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions which they say are complicit in the “oppression of Palestinians”.
Sally Rooney, writer of Normal People, and Booker Prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy, who penned The God of Small Things, are among the writers, publishers and literary festival workers to have signed the letter organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature (PFL).
The signatories, who include Booker Prize favourite Percival Everett, pledge to boycott Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that have “remained silent observers” of Israel’s role in the war in Gaza.
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a legal advocacy group, has accused the letter circulated by Fossil Free Books (FFB) of being “plainly discriminatory against Israelis”, citing the UK Equality Act 2010 and other discriminatory legislation from around the world.
In a letter to the Publishers Association, Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UKLFI, said: “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 boycott is also contrary to laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of nationality in many other countries around the world… most US States have adopted legislation providing for sanctions against participants in boycotts targeting Israel.”
He also said the letter made false allegations about Israel, such as accusing the country of genocide, despite the former president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) clarifying in a BBC interview that the court did not decide that there was a plausible case of genocide on the part of Israel, as had been incorrectly reported in some media.
The letter also puts the Palestinian death toll at 43,362 without saying that the figure comes from the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza, whose data, Turner says, “has been shown to be fabricated and manipulated”.
This is not the first time that the Israel-Gaza war has sparked division in the publishing industry.
In April, Jewish authors said the Society of Authors (SoA) had been “hijacked by extremists”, after its members tabled a vote on a motion demanding the body issue an official statement condemning Israel’s military action in Gaza. The proposal, put forward by Fossil Free Books, did not mention Hamas, the hostages or the slaughter of Israelis.
The boycott letter currently circulating commits its signatories to cutting all ties with Israeli cultural institutions which are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights”, whether through “discriminatory” policies and practices or by “whitewashing and justifying Israel's occupation, apartheid or genocide”.
Signatories also pledge to boycott institutions that have never publicly recognised “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law”.
Turner claimed signatories that others who have engaged in similar anti-Israel boycotts, such as Airbnb and Unilever, were forced to abandon their campaigns following legal actions, incurring substantial losses and expenses.