A group of organizations – and more than 1,000 authors from around the world – have launched a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions “that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”

The boycott was launched Monday on LitHub. Initial Canadian signatories include 2023 Giller Prize winner Sarah Bernstein, Dionne Brand, David Bergen, Guy Maddin, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Miriam Toews. The number of signatories has grown to more than 5,000 since the campaign was first launched.

In the open letter, authors say they will not co-operate with Israeli cultural 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.”

The letter stresses that it is the role of authors to look at the relationships Israeli institutions have with “apartheid and displacement” before engaging with them, following the example of writers in South Africa who adopted a similar position that was “their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.”

“We call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge,” the letter says. “We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.”

The boycott is organized by the international organizations Publishers for Palestine and the Palestine Festival of Literature, the U.S. organizations Writers Against the War on Gaza and Books Against Genocide, and the U.K. groups Book Workers for a Free Palestine and Fossil Free Books.