Over 1,000 authors and literary industry workers have signed a letter vowing to boycott any Israeli literary institutions that are complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine, in an effort that organizers say is the largest cultural boycott of Israel in history.

In the open letter, signatories say they “cannot in good conscience” work with Israeli institutions that have contributed to the genocide and displacement, likening the campaign to the nearly three decade boycott of South African institutions that has been credited with helping to bring down the apartheid state.

“This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months,” the group says. “Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.”

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