Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy and Rachel Kushner are among more than 1,000 writers and publishing professionals who have signed a letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that are “complicit or silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”

The signatories of the pledge declare that they will not work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are “complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights,” including “discriminatory policies and practices” or “whitewashing and justifying the Israeli occupation, apartheid or genocide”.

Institutions that have never publicly recognized the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted.

The campaign was organized by the Palestine Literature Festival (also known as PalFest), which, together with campaign groups Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine, Publishers for Palestine and Writers, hosts an annual festival of free public events in cities across Palestine the war on Gaza and Fossil Free Books.

“We as writers, publishers, literary festival staff and other book creators publish this letter as we confront the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century,” the statement begins, which goes on to say that Israel is in crisis Since last October, “at least 43,362” Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and this is a result of “75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.”

Culture “has played a significant role in normalizing these injustices,” it says. Israeli cultural institutions, “often collaborating directly with the state, have played a key role in obscuring, obfuscating and distorting the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.”

Industrial workers have a “role to play,” the pledge says. “We cannot in good conscience work with Israeli institutions without questioning their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” it says, noting that “countless authors” took the same position against apartheid in South Africa. The letter ends with a call for the signatories' colleagues to join the pledge.

In response to the letter, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an association of lawyers supporting Israel, sent its own letter to the Society of Authors, the Publishers Association and the Independent Publishers Guild. “This boycott is clearly discrimination against Israelis. “The authors do not impose comparable conditions on publishers, festivals, literary agencies or publications of other nationalities,” the UKLFI claimed, adding that its members believed that taking part in the boycott entailed legal risks.

Omar Robert Hamilton, co-founder and current festival director of PalFest, said he believes the UKLFI letter “is notable only for its moral bankruptcy and proves that Israel's apologists have nothing to say.”

Rooney, the author of “Normal People” and most recently “Intermezzo,” has long been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights and in 2021 refused to sell the Hebrew translation rights of her third novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” to an Israeli publisher .

Roy and Kushner are also vocal critics of Israel. When Roy accepted the PEN-Pinter Prize earlier this month, she used her speech to talk about Gaza and said she would donate her prize money to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund.