An open letter, signed by authors and other book workers, makes false allegations against Israel and commits its signatories to engage in a discriminatory and illegal boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the Publishers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Society of Authors and leading UK publishers, pointing out false allegations in the letter and the legal and reputational risks of participating in, assisting or supporting the discriminatory boycott.
The false allegations include:
- Describing the Palestinians’ plight as “the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century”. This ignores genocide in Sudan, ethnocide in Xinjiang, cannibalism in Congo, extermination in Ethiopia, mass murder in Nigeria and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, amongst other terrible crimes around the world.
- Claiming that “Israeli has made Gaza unlivable”, ignoring the fact that over 2 million people are actually living there.
- Asserting that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October”. That figure comes from a Hamas-controlled ministry in Gaza, whose data has been shown to be fabricated and manipulated, and includes Palestinians killed by Palestinian fire, explosives and rockets, as well as over 17,000 Palestinian terrorists killed according to Israeli estimates.
- Alleging that “this is the biggest war on children this century”, without noting the death tolls in other conflicts, evidence of exaggeration by Hamas and that “children” include teenage terrorists up to 18 recruited by Hamas and other terrorist organisations
- Claiming that this is a genocide, even though the President of the International Court of Justice explained a BBC interview that the Court did not find a plausible case of genocide.
Commitment to boycott
Based on these false premises, the signatories make commitments that they “will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:
- Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or
- Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.”
They also “call on our publishers, editors and agents to join to……. stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.”
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 contrary to section 29(1) of the UK Equality Act 2010 which states that
“A person (a “service-provider”) concerned with the provision of a service to the public or a section of the public (for payment or not) must not discriminate against a person requiring the service by not providing the person with the service”.
The boycott is also contrary to laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of nationality in many other countries around the world. In addition, most US States have adopted legislation providing for sanctions against participants in boycotts targeting Israel.
Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UKLFI commented: “Anyone contemplating participating in this discriminatory boycott should note what happened when Airbnb and Unilever participated in boycotts targeting Israel. Faced with multiple legal actions by pro-Israel activists in the US, as well as sanctions by US States based on this legislation, they were forced to drop their boycotts, incurring substantial losses, expenses and reputational damage.”
Read UKLFI letter here: Letter to Publishers Association