1. WHY ENACT PACBI IN PUBLISHING?

Israel’s book industry has a decades-old and ongoing involvement in whitewashing, denial, and justification of Israeli war crimes and the crime against humanity of apartheid, as Amnesty International has designated Israel’s regime against Palestinians.

Israel’s major book publishers, festivals, and book industry at large (including but not limited to the Jerusalem International Writers Festival, Jerusalem International Book Fair, Hebrew Book Week) continue to partner with the Israeli government while it carries out what leading experts have defined as genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Despite operating in Israel’s system of apartheid, and therefore benefiting from it, the vast majority of Israeli book publishers and distribution companies, sales agents, book stores and other book institutions have never endorsed the full, internationally-recognized rights of the Palestinian people. There is, however, one Israeli book publisher (November Books) that is not complicit. 

For best practices on implementing PACBI and assessing compliance, we encourage you to seek guidelines set by Palestinian civil society on https://www.bdsmovement.net/pacbi. We also encourage book workers to do their own research about any institution they plan to work with and to do their legal due diligence in their business practices. This guide encourages publishers to take all possible actions to pressure Israeli to end its genocide of Palestinians and its apartheid regime in Palestine, but how you’ll do this will vary based on where you work and what is legally possible. 

It is important for independent publishers to take an unyielding and conspicuous stance on PACBI for three reasons: 1) the more of us there are saying that PACBI is the baseline for solidarity, the less risky it becomes for any one of us to be scapegoated for it; 2) our collective support builds a critical mass that can influence power; 3) political consistency in all arenas will move us closer to a free Palestine. 

WHAT ARE THE ENTRY POINTS FOR COMMITTING TO PACBI?

Across the range of our work – editorial, acquisitions, marketing, publicity, rights, and permissions – there is a point of entry for publishers to enact their commitments to Palestine. No action is too small.

Refer to the PACBI/BDS guidelines on bdsmovement.net for specific guidance on endorsing the boycott of complicit cultural and academic institutions in Israel. 

Here are five things you can do to concretely enact PACBI:

  1. Sign on to P4P’s statement of solidarity and encourage your peers in the industry to do the same. Make your commitment to PACBI public on your website, either using specific PACBI language, or the broader language of human rights. 
  2. Formally recognize your commitment to PACBI in your contract, submission guidelines, and website so that you are upfront about your standards with authors and publishing partners.
  3. Cut ties with Israeli literary agencies that are not BDS-compliant (that’s all of them at the moment). Do not sell rights to complicit Israeli publishers.
  4. Don’t export your books or magazines to bookstores in Israeli settlements (Israel’s two massive bookstore chains Steimatzky and Tzomet Sfarim also operate in illegal settlements in the West Bank.)
  5. Know your media landscape and don’t advertise in complicit outlets that reproduce colonial and Zionist talking points.

Does this pledge prohibit us from working with Israeli individuals?

No. The call is for book workers and publishing companies to refuse to work with Israeli institutions that are complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. This refusal takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity. There are also 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and Palestinian civil society has developed context-sensitive guidelines for that community. 

I (or my company or institution) work in a position that does not have power over all the contracts involved in a book’s publication. Can I still publicly commit to PACBI?

Yes. This pledge is about the contracts that you are being asked to sign and/or that you do have control over. Some book workers don’t always have control over all of the third party contracts in a project, especially in contexts where book workers are working on projects that involve multi-national corporations that have a monopoly on markets. We see this pledge as representing one important step towards reducing and ultimately ending complicity in the oppression of the Palestinian people. We hope that book workers can strive to implement it to the fullest extent reasonable. 

How can we enact PACBI without attracting repressive state responses, or risking funding loss or litigation? 

Censorship and criminalization of Palestine solidarity are real. If you need to put your PACBI commitment in inconspicuous terms, use the language of international law. Your statements can read: “We won’t do business with anyone who has violated international law” or “We work with businesses and jurisdictions compliant with international law.”

How do we know if people we work with (e.g., sellers, distributors) share our commitments?

Get to know who you’re working with. Before entering into an agreement with a vendor, supplier, or distributor, ask whether they do business with institutions in Israel. If you work with literary agents, ask them to incorporate your PACBI commitment into their representation of your books as well. Be clear with contracted workers like publicists about media outlets you’re not willing to work with because of complicity or whitewashing of genocide. 

Include editorial guidelines on language about Palestine, genocide, and apartheid into your style guide so that freelance copyeditors, indexers, and proofreaders also understand your position.

What does implementing PACBI mean when selling rights or negotiating with literary agents?

Cut ties or don’t work with Israeli literary agencies. Decline permissions from complicit Israeli publishers. Don’t accept invitations to Israel. 

Heed the boycott of the Frankfurt Book Fair. You can read about the reasons for the Frankfurt boycott here. If you are seeking to participate in rights fairs, look instead to fairs in Guadalajara, Turin, London, and Literal Pro. Add your voice to the demand that the London Book Fair disinvite the state of Israel as an exhibitor.

Are there legal mechanisms by which we can put this pledge into action?

There are multiple ways to ensure consistency on PACBI in the most common publishing industry contracts. Some approaches that have worked in the past include:

  • Retaining or reserving rights for specific distribution territories that you would like to make decisions about on a case-by-case basis.
  • Specifying that you should be consulted and/or have a right of refusal on certain types of decisions e.g. festival invitations, rights sales, agreements with financial, producing or distribution partners etc.
  • Adding a confidentiality clause to ensure that nothing in the agreement is shared beyond the people who are parties to the contract

Some workers in the film industry have successfully introduced specific clauses into their contracts that clearly identify the complicity they want to avoid. Here is an example of such a clause that was developed in consultation with Palestine Legal and Artists for Palestine UK:

“The film will not be screened or otherwise appear at any institution (including film festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and others) that is partnered with, funded/sponsored by, or otherwise operating under the aegis of states or entities/agencies that have been charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice, or that have been charged with crimes against humanity, including apartheid, by international courts or leading human rights organizations.”

If you have used other legal mechanisms, please let us know. We will continue to update this section as we hear more.

If you are seeking authoritative sources that confirm that Israel is perpetrating genocide, see these reports:

3. BY REFUSING TO WORK WITH CERTAIN AUTHORS, COMPLICIT INSTITUTIONS, OR TO WORK IN CERTAIN CONTEXTS, AREN’T WE GIVING UP OUR VOICES WHERE IT’S MOST IMPORTANT?

Committing to PACBI is about amplifying our voices by speaking collectively, not about silencing them. By signing this pledge, you are honoring the call made by Palestinian civil society, and you are joining millions of other cultural workers who refuse to provide cover for Israel’s apartheid state, which uses culture to whitewash oppression. For literary dialogue to be meaningful, it must be grounded in the legal recognition that all humans are entitled to equal rights. Until that time, we speak loudest by speaking in solidarity with Palestinians. As publishers and book workers, we believe we must meet our ethical obligation to do no harm. 

Please reach out to Publishers for Palestine (publishersforpalestine@gmail.com) with any queries that you cannot find answers to on https://www.bdsmovement.net/pacbi. We are a small group of committed book workers, and we cannot answer jurisdiction-specific or legal questions, but we can help point you toward resources and organizations that are well equipped to answer specific queries.

For further information, including your rights in specific regions:

Palestine Legal (US)

European Legal Support Center

The Legal Centre for Palestine (Canada)

https://www.communicatingpalestine.org/about

https://actionnetwork.org/user_files/user_files/000/060/430/original/PFC_Toolkit_PDF.pdf 

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