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Nobel laureate and renowned author JM Coetzee has refused to attend the Jerusalem International Writers Festival, taking place from 25 to 28 May, citing Israel’s “genocidal campaign” in Gaza as the main reason.
The festival has previously hosted authors like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates.
Coetzee communicated his refusal in a letter sent to the Israeli festival’s artistic director, Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler.
“For the past two years the state of Israel has been conducting a genocidal campaign in Gaza that has been vastly disproportionate to the murderous provocation of 7 October 2023,” Coetzee wrote in the letter, as reported by The Guardian.
He added: “This campaign, conducted by the IDF, appears to have had the enthusiastic support of the vast majority of Israel’s population. For this reason it is not possible for any considerable sector of Israeli society, including its intellectual and arts community, to claim that it should not share in the blame for the atrocities in Gaza.”
The 86-year-old author also highlighted that it would take several years for Israel to clear its name for its actions in Gaza and establish itself once again on the global stage.
Coetzee was born in apartheid South Africa and currently lives in Australia. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, with some of his most iconic works including “Disgrace” and “Waiting for the Barbarians”.
Coetzee denounces Israel’s “campaign of annihilation”
The author highlighted that he was once a supporter of Israel, especially when the country had strong Western support. He even visited Jerusalem in 1987 to receive the Jerusalem prize, which is awarded to writers who celebrate individual freedom in society.
However, he emphasised that Israel’s current “campaign of annihilation in Gaza” has changed his stance.
“I kept telling myself that surely the day was coming when the Israeli people would have a change of heart and deliver some form of justice to the Palestinian people whose land they had taken over,” he noted.
“Long-time supporters of Israel have turned away in revulsion at the actions of the Israeli military.”
Fermentto-Tzaisler, the artistic director of the writers festival, told Israeli news outlet Ynet that she was shocked at the harshness of Coetzee’s response.
“As a South African writer who fought apartheid, I would have expected – or perhaps dreamed – that you would extend a hand to me, that you would say to me, ‘Fight, my daughter. Do not stop fighting.’…You left me in despair,” she said in a reply letter as reported by Ynet.
Growing backlash against Israeli film and literary events
Several authorshave withdrawn from film and literary events hosted by Israel or associated institutions in the last few years.
Sally Rooney refused to sell the Hebrew-language translation rights to her third novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You”, to Modan, an Israel-based publishing house in 2021. This was also seen as support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Canadian author Naomi Klein also pulled out of the 2024 PEN World Voices Festival in March 2024, to protest PEN America’s “inadequate” response to the Israel-Gaza war.
Similarly, several major film stars and filmmakers like Olivia Colman, Ken Loach and Tilda Swinton have signed a pledge called “Film Workers for Palestine”, vowing to decline to work with Israeli film institutions. This also includes festivals like Docaviv and Jerusalem Film Festival, which they consider “complicit in genocide.”