“The effort to become a great novelist simply involves attempting to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.” —James Baldwin
The American book industry sees itself as the keeper of this truth, as the arbiter of literature, as the necessary gatekeeper of a sanctified canon. Yet time and again, it doubles down on the status quo and props up the powerful, championing not the voices of the many but the interests of a few.
Never before has the true nature of US publishing been so apparent as during the past year of the Zionist entity’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza. Western literature and publishing are instrumental to the colonisation of Palestine, from their foundational role in the inception of Zionist ideology to present-day investments in “Israeli” technology.
Behind the scenes at most major publishing houses (which, it’s important to note, are subsidiaries of multinational media empires like NewsCorp and Paramount), the climate is hostile to anyone with a conscience. Official company statements following October 7 condemned the Al-Aqsa Flood, relegating Hamas, the armed resistance and elected government of Gaza, to “terrorists,” and offering no acknowledgment of the Zionist entity’s illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
NewsCorp, Paramount (parent companies of HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster respectively at the time), and Penguin Random House pledged significant contributions to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation, an organization that from October 2023 to December 2023, donated $64.2 million to illegal settlers of “Israel” and $0 to the people of Palestine.
Macmillan’s CEO, Jon Yaged, did not even have the decency to name Palestine in his email to the company, instead opting for “the Middle East.” And well before October 7, Holtzbrinck and Bertelsmann (German parent companies of Macmillan and Penguin Random House respectively) were embracing their Nazi roots by investing millions in “Israeli” tech, AI, surveillance, and security technologies.
While well over 40,000 Palestinians have been martyred, publishing has perpetuated a propagandised Zionist narrative, publishing titles trafficking in myths of mass-rape like Black Saturday by Trey Yingst, and defence of settler colonialism like On Settler Colonialism by Adam Kirsch.
In the last year, a junior Big Five employee was laid off less than two weeks after speaking out against a planned Zionist book. Other acts of individual defiance by authors, booksellers, and beyond are also met with retaliation, while publishing industry DEI taskforces facilitate “antisemitism education” trainings, a manipulative deflection under the guise of “equity” with collaborators such as Project Shema, a proxy to the racist Anti-Defamation League whose founder denies the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
In response to industry complicity, a movement of book workers arose to insist on literature’s power to liberate, including Books Against Genocide (BAG), a collective of Big Five publishing professionals demanding our companies end all relationships with the Zionist project, along with writer-led coalitions like Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) and KidLit4Ceasefire – the latter two having called on Joe Biden to declare a permanent and unconditional ceasefire and demanded their industry colleagues uphold the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott (PACBI).
WAWOG has since organised sustained boycotts against both PEN America and the New York Times. Just last month, 500 international publishers demanded that the Frankfurt Book Fair cut ties with “Israel.”
The publishing establishment is no match for this new movement, which has targeted one shamelessly hypocritical group within the vast Zionist ecosystem of mainstream publishing: alleged “free-speech” advocacy organization PEN America. PEN America claims to stand “at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression worldwide” but refused to call for a ceasefire or address the systematic assassinations of writers and journalists in Gaza.
After Israeli Occupation Forces unlawfully arrested Palestinian freedom fighter and author Ahed Tamimi, PEN America released (and then redacted) an egregiously insensitive statement calling on her family to “investigate” the antisemitic post that was fabricated to justify said arrest, and they forcibly removed Palestinian American author Randa Jarrar from protesting a PEN event with Zionist actor Mayim Bialik.
More than 1,300 prominent writers across genres denounced PEN America’s performative “humanitarian” charade with an open letter. Twenty-one writers nominated for various PEN awards withdrew from consideration. This sustained pressure led to the cancellation of the PEN World Voices Festival and the PEN Jean Stein award, redirecting the latter’s $75,000 prize money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
Ultimately, one cannot deny literature’s inextricable link to modern revolutionary movements, which is why the Zionist entity kills Palestinian poets and writers with the same strikes as it does Palestinian resistance fighters. And now, these various efforts in publishing are beginning to coalesce, broadening the monetary and ideological divestment from Israel to not only ensure Zionism’s obsolescence in publishing, but also to project a new vision for the industry’s future: a unified community of authors, literary agents, publishing workers, booksellers, librarians, and readers bound by their commitment to justice and powerful enough to unseat the existing status quo.
Books Against Genocide is a coalition and campaign of book workers pressuring US “Big 5” trade book publishers to end their relationships with the Zionist project called “Israel.”
Follow them on X: @NoBook4Genocide
Follow them on Instagram: booksagainstgenocide
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
