More than 5,000 authors and publishers—including many of the most prominent names in the publishing world— are boycotting Israeli publishing institutions complicit in the unfolding genocide of Palestinians.
In less than 48 hours more than 5,000 authors, book workers, and publishers—including many of the most prominent names in the publishing world—signed on to our collective campaign to commit to an anti-apartheid boycott of complicit Israeli publishing institutions that uphold and whitewash the unfolding genocide of Palestinians.
Alongside our collaborators—Books Against Genocide, Bookworkers for a Free Palestine, Fossil Free Books, Palestine Festival of Literature, and Writers Against the War on Gaza—we have been blown over by the overwhelmingly positive response and moved by a volume of signatories that we can hardly keep up with. Translations of the letter of commitment have been offered up by publishers from around the world, who have been sharing it through their own networks. The workers of the publishing world say no to genocide and are ready to wield their collective power.
As the campaign picks up steam, publishers have a critical role to play in joining this call to refuse collaboration with Israeli publishing institutions that are complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime.
This powerful uptake of the Palestinian cause among cultural workers and institutions has strong historical precedent in the South African anti-apartheid movement, when authors, artists, and cultural institutions took up the struggle against South African apartheid and became an integral part of its fall. Publishers withheld their books from shipment to the apartheid state. Library boards implemented limitations on what they would add to their collections based on publisher complicity. Publishing institutions around the world should be proud to take a similar stand today, and be part of this moment of reckoning. (more...)
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