New Letter Opposes Efforts To ‘Harass and Ostracize’ Israeli Writers and Publishers

More than 1,000 authors, intellectuals, and entertainment stars are responding to the recent call to boycott Israeli literary institutions by issuing their own petition in support of freedom of expression and against discriminatory boycotts. The letter, organized by a group called the Creative Community for Peace, explains that “We continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracize their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” The 1,000-plus signatories include the likes of Nobel laureates Herta Muller and Elfriede Jelinek, historians Sir Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, American celebrities Ozzy Obsbourne, Mayim Bialik, and Debra Messing, philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, and other prominent figures like the talent agent Scooter Braun and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik. The letter emerged days after authors like Sally Rooney, Rachel Kushner, and a thousand other writers pledged not to work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies, and publications that they identify as “complicit in violating Palestinian rights,” including “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid, or genocide.”Branding the war in Gaza as the “the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century,” the signatories claim that they “cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement.” The authors of the latest petition, however, describe “the instincts and motivations behind cultural boycotts,” both in practice and throughout history, as being “directly in opposition to the liberal values most writers hold sacred.” Boycotts of “creatives and creative institutions” they add, “simply create more divisiveness and foments further hatred.” By Thursday morning, the founder and director of a prominent Jerusalem-based publishing agency, Deborah Harris, and one of the literary agents employed there, Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs, joined the discussion via an opinion article published in the New York Times. The two authors — who define the mission of their literary agency as bringing “Israeli literature to the world” — reasoned that “the solution to the conflict” cannot possibly be “to read less.”The petition opposing the boycott condemns discrimination, persecution, or exclusion of Jewish or Zionist authors as “examples of self-righteous sects, movements and cults” using “short-lived moments of power to enforce their vision of purity.” Most recently, one of the signatories, Mr. Lévy, who is a celebrated philosopher and intellectual, had an American trade publication, Shelf Awareness, cancel an advertisement for his new book, “Israel Alone,” because the title included the name of the Jewish state. In an op-ed published over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lévy wrote that the publisher of Shelf Awareness justified the decision by explaining that he worried the ad would cause his “partners” to face “trouble they haven’t asked for and don’t wish to have.”Mr. Lévy wrote in his op-ed that “at first I was stunned. I found it hard to believe that a book of reflection, written by a philosopher, could be blacklisted simply because of the presence of the word ‘Israel’ on its cover. I found it almost unbelievable that the name Israel can become unspeakable in a part of this great country, which since the Holocaust has been the second homeland for Jews, and whose brave soldiers liberated Europe from the Nazis 80 years ago.” The book, which the Sun reviewed last month, details Mr. Lévy’s experiences in Israel after Hamas’s attack on October 7. Following the ad cancelation — which he calls “my first censorship experience” — he decided that he would launch a tour of American university campuses “most impacted by this disgraceful rhetoric and violence” to speak on behalf of Israel and also in defense of free speech.

New Letter Opposes Efforts To ‘Harass and Ostracize’ Israeli Writers and Publishers

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