More than 1,000 high-profile individuals from the literary and entertainment worlds have signed a letter condemning calls from colleagues to boycott Israeli cultural institutions.
The letter was a response to another, organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature, endorsed by best-selling Irish author Sally Rooney and signed by 1,000 authors and literary institutions, pledging “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.”
In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre and amid the ensuing war, many Jewish authors have been excluded from literary events and spaces. The New York State Writers Institute’s annual book festival at the University at Albany was disrupted because two authors refused to discuss their books with the panel’s moderator because “she is a Zionist.”
In response to the boycott call, the California-based pro-Israel organization Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) published an open letter signed by leading literary and entertainment figures such as Bernard Henri-Lévy, Lee Child, Herta Müller, Howard Jacobson, Elfriede Jelinek, Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing, Julianna Margulies, Haim Saban, Gene Simmons, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, Douglas Murray, Matti Friedman, Jerry O’Connell, Simon Sebag Montefiore.
Author and historian Montefiore said: “The resort to witch hunt is always dangerous and ugly especially when the inquisitors are writers. History is full of examples of self-righteous cadres of self-appointed judges who tried to enforce their version of purity by excluding people. Whatever one thinks of this tragic Middle Eastern war, who judges who is good, who is bad? Once started where would it stop? Who is pure enough?”
CCFP Executive Director Ari Ingel said, “Authors, writers, and literary groups have faced non-stop harassment by a dedicated group of illiberal activists since Oct. 7. This is not just about Israeli authors. This is a coordinated campaign to bully and threaten anyone who refuses to condemn Israel, which targets Jews and their allies worldwide.
“These boycott calls, now being led by members of the literary community themselves, are reminiscent of the 1933 boycott of Jewish authors, when antisemites burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, alongside American works by Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller were burned. This is where things are once again headed.”
