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Over 1,000 Literary Industry Figures Reject Efforts to Boycott Jewish, Israeli Authors

Writer, director, and executive producer David Mamet takes part in a panel discussion of HBO’s “Phil Spector” during the Winter Press Tour for the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, California. Photo: Reuters

More than 1,000 pro-Israel figures in the literary and entertainment industries — including authors, publishers, writers, and journalists — signed an open letter criticizing the thousands of authors who recently vowed to boycott Israeli publishers and institutions in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

On Monday, the Palestine Festival of Literature published an open letter in which initially more than 1,000 authors pledged to not work with Israeli institutions — including publishers, festivals, literary agencies, and publications — that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights,” operating “discriminatory policies and practices,” or “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid, or genocide.” Signatories included Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy, and Rachel Kushner. All three have been outspoken critics of Israel and in 2021, Rooney refused to sell the Hebrew translation rights of her third novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” to an Israeli publisher in support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The anti-Israel signatories of the open letter claimed Israeli cultural institutions “have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising, and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.” They said Israeli cultural institutions that have never publicly recognized the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted. Among the signatories were winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award. As of Tuesday, over 5,000 authors and professionals in the publishing world have signed the open letter.

In response, the nonprofit and pro-Israel entertainment industry organization Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) published its own open letter on Tuesday that was signed by more than 1,000 members of the literary and entertainment industries. The open letter described boycotts against authors and those who work with them as “illiberal and dangerous.” It further explained that regardless of ones personal views about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in Gaza, “boycotts of creatives and creative institutions simply create more divisiveness and foment further hatred.” The signatories also included winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, and Pulitzer Prize — such as David Mamet, Herta Müller, and Howard Jacobson — as well as entertainment figures including actresses Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing, and Julianna Margulies and musicians Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons.

“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,” CCFP’s open letter stated, referring to Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7. “The instincts and motivations behind cultural boycotts, in practice and throughout history, are directly in opposition to the liberal values most writers hold sacred.”

“In fact, we believe that writers, authors, and books — along with the festivals that showcase them — bring people together, transcend boundaries, broaden awareness, open dialogue, and can affect positive change,” the letter additionally noted. “We believe that anyone who works to subvert this spirit merely adds yet another roadblock to freedom, justice, equality, and peace that we all desperately desire … We call on our friends and colleagues worldwide to join us in expressing their support for Israeli and Jewish publishers, authors, and all book festivals, publishers, and literary agencies that refuse to capitulate to censorship based on identity or litmus tests.”

Jacobson, a Booker Prize-winning author, said that art is “the antithesis to a political party.” He explained: “It is a meeting place, not an echo chamber. Art explores, discovers, differs, questions, and surprises. Precisely where a door should be forever open, the boycotters slam it closed.”

Lee Child, who is the author of the “Jack Reacher” novel series, believes “politically targeting” members of the literary industry because of their nationality “is misguided.”

“At a time when dialogue is paramount and when compromise can lead to peace, castigation and blanket boycotts are counterproductive,” he added. “The written word, and the dissemination of it, must always be protected, especially in times of heightened tension. And to achieve peace, we must humanize one another and build bridges across communities through the open exchange of ideas. Literature allows for that. Boycotts hinder it.”

Philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Lévy, who also signed the CCFP open letter, noted that while he has always been supportive of a “debate, clash of opinions, even the confrontation of convictions,” efforts to boycott Israeli literary figures and institutions is “pure antisemitism, anti-democratic, and dangerous.”

“The goal of this boycott is the delegitimization of the only Jewish state in the world — Israel. It is a moral obscenity and must be firmly condemned by all free-thinking and democratic citizens of the world,” he said.

Author and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore added, “The resort to witch hunt is always dangerous and ugly especially when the inquisitors are writers. History is full of examples of self-righteous cadres of self-appointed judges who tried to enforce their version of purity by excluding people. Whatever one thinks of this tragic Middle Eastern war, who judges who is good, who bad? Once started where would it stop? Who is pure enough?”

The post Over 1,000 Literary Industry Figures Reject Efforts to Boycott Jewish, Israeli Authors first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.

They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.

Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.

State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.

Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.

Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.

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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family

i24 NewsThe body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.

Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.

“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.

“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.

“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”

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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24

i24 NewsThe stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.

Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.

The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.

“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”

“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”

Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.

After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.

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