This moment is a decisive one for humanity. Only days into the first stage of the ceasefire agreement, Israel has escalated its violence in the West Bank and continues to kill and displace Palestinians in Gaza. With siege and occupation still underway, upholding the rights of Palestinians is more important than ever.
The military and diplomatic complicity of Western states, especially the US, UK, and Germany, has enabled Israel to destroy life-sustaining conditions in Gaza. To prevent more loss of life, it is clear that the current ceasefire must be followed by an end to the siege and occupation, and the dismantling of Israel’s apartheid rule. An industry central to the global circulation of information and the direction of cultural tides, the publishing world has an important role to play in pursuing accountability for genocide and apartheid, as part of the global Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
It is in the spirit of that effort and in support of the Palestinian-led BDS movement that Publishers for Palestine, a network of nearly 600 publishers based in 50 countries around the world, now calls for an industry-wide boycott of the world’s largest publishing event, the Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse–FBM), for its complicity in genocide, its refusal to assert and uphold the rights of the Palestinian people under international law, and its refusal to condemn and sever economic and cultural ties with Israeli apartheid.
Our call comes after the Frankfurt Book Fair’s repeated failures to address their longstanding ties to German state and corporate partnership in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Not only have FBM’s programming gaps contributed to the erasure of Palestinians, and the normalization, disguising, and denial of Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians, it has, through public discourse, repeatedly and disgracefully declared its explicit support for genocidal Israel. In October 2023, director Juergen Boos stated the Fair’s stance of “complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”
Frankfurt has further entrenched anti-Palestinian racism and censorship by cancelling the award ceremony of the LiVeraturpreis that was to be presented to Palestinian author Adania Shibli as part of the Fair’s 2023 edition for her novel A Minor Detail. Such incidents sparked withdrawals from the 2023 edition on the part of a number of organizations, including the Arab Publishers Association, the Emirates Publishers Association, and the Sharjah Book Fair. Indonesia and Malaysia both undertook national boycotts of the Fair, with statements from Indonesian Book Publishers Association (Ikapi) and the Malaysian Ministry of Education. We proudly join our colleagues and peers around the world who have already taken up the decision to boycott.
In June of last year, the Frankfurt Book Fair celebrated the awarding of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to American journalist Anne Applebaum, and subsequently hosted the author—who has publicly praised Israel’s illegal bombing of Palestinian media outlets as part of its journocide—during the Fair’s 2024 edition.
The Fair’s deep ethical inconsistencies include a 2023 pledge to increase Israeli programming, in stark contrast with its 2022 ban of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. FBM’s well documented ties to complicit Israeli corporations and institutions and its entanglement with the German state include relationships with German multibillion-dollar publishing multinationals Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA., each of which hold multimillion-dollar investment portfolios in Israeli tech, AI, surveillance, and security technologies. Holtzbrinck also hosts the Frankfurt Book Fair’s Jerusalem International Book Forum Breakfast, a long-standing annual event.
We reject the Frankfurt Book Fair’s collaboration with Israel and the complicit German government, as the Bundestag escalates state oppression and efforts to repress Palestine solidarity, including its ongoing efforts to criminalize BDS.
Our open letter issued to FBM last September that requested actions of redress regarding Palestine remains unacknowledged. In the letter, international publishers asked FBM to denounce Israel’s targeting of Gaza’s writers, students, schools, universities, libraries, archives, and book publishers in its ongoing genocide. UN experts have condemned Israel’s “domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and, more recently, ecocide,” while FBM remains silent.
Publishers made four basic demands of the Fair:
- condemn Israel’s regime of genocide in Gaza and affirm the human rights of the Palestinian people;
- refuse collaboration with complicit Israeli book publishers, including by barring their participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair;
- denounce the attacks on Palestinian writers, journalists, and academics—and acknowledge that such attacks are part of a genocidal project seeking to erase Palestinian life and culture;
- and create programming that prominently features Palestinian writers, publishers, and narratives.
A year after the International Court of Justice’s ruling of a plausible genocide, and nine months after the UN’s report of Israel’s scholasticide in Gaza, the Frankfurt Book Fair has shown no sign of fulfilling the above calls nor of slowing its support for Israeli apartheid.
In advance of the 2024 edition, author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson voiced her support for our industry calls upon the Frankfurt Book Fair:
“Palestine has an incredibly rich history and practice of literature, storytelling and artistic and intellectual exchange. Palestinian writers and artists have continued writing and creating through the ongoing Nakba, Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism and genocide. I stand with Publishers for Palestine demanding the Frankfurt Book Fair denounce the genocide, affirm the rights of Palestinians, denounce the targeting of writers and journalists in Palestine, and call for the book festival to implement substantive programming featuring Palestinian writers and artists, while fostering a safe and supportive space for Palestinian cultural workers at the festival.”
Until those demands are met, Publishers for Palestine calls for a full boycott of the Frankfurt Book Fair / Frankfurter Buchmesse and urges the global publishing community to join..
—Publishers for Palestine, January 29th, 2025
Publishers for Palestine 