PEN Refusing to Drop Sponsorship, According to a Letter to its Members

New York, NY, April 5, 2016 - In a letter made public today over 100 writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Junot Díaz, Richard Ford, and Alice Walker, and award-winning author Louise Erdrich, have called on the PEN American Center “to reject support from the Embassy of Israel” for PEN’s annual World Voices Festival. The seven-day Festival takes place from April 25 to May 1 in New York City. In promotional materials, PEN lists the Israeli Embassy as among the “Champions” of the Festival, and as a sponsor of one of the Festival’s panels.

The letter asserts, “It is deeply regrettable that the Festival has chosen to accept sponsorship from the Israeli government, even as it intensifies its decades-long denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people, including the frequent targeting of Palestinian writers and journalists.” The letter was sent to PEN privately on March 29 by Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, with 62 individual and 11 organizational signatories. The list of signers has since grown to more than 100 individuals.

Protesters called on Taylor Swift to renounce Leviev

New York, NY, December 21, 2015 – On Saturday, for the second year running, 50 New York human rights advocates held a celebratory protest in front of a closed Leviev diamond store on Madison Avenue on one of the biggest holiday shopping days. Days before the protest, staff working for Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev had insisted his store would be open, per their publicized business hours. The Leviev store was also mysteriously closed the day of the December 2014 anti-apartheid caroling protest. This is the ninth consecutive year New Yorkers have gathered in front of Leviev’s store singing holiday anti-apartheid carols critical of Leviev’s construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola.

New York, NY, November 16, 2015 – On Saturday, November 14th, nearly 400 New Yorkers packed the Verso Books Loft in DUMBO, Brooklyn, to capacity for “Palestine Calling: A Launch Party to Amplify the Cultural Boycott of Israel in NYC” (photos). The event featured rousing musical performances by eclectic artists including oud virtuoso Simon Shaheen, Suhel and Tamer Nafar of the Palestinian hip hop group DAM, Brooklyn vocalist and composer Tamar-kali, Sonny Singh of Red Baraat, and Daro Behroozi of Lucky Chops. Eighty-eight artists and cultural workers at the event signed on to a New York City-focused pledge of support for the cultural boycott of Israel.

"It was really exciting to be collaborating with so many incredible musicians coming together around the common cause of justice in Palestine,” remarked Sonny Singh. “I hope this concert will inspire many other musicians and artists to join this movement for the cultural boycott of Israel."

August 4, New York, NY—Executives at O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, refused yesterday to receive a small delegation of human rights advocates at O’s headquarters at the Hearst Corporation’s office in Manhattan. The delegation was bearing a letter signed by over 5600 people calling on Ms. Winfrey to publicly distance herself from the companies of Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev. A worker in the Hearst Corporation mailroom told delegates he was ordered to refuse to even accept the letter detailing Leviev’s companies’ involvement in serious human rights abuses in Angola and Palestine. As a result, the visitors held a small protest, holding signs and distributing flyers to passersby in front of the Hearst Corporation’s Manhattan office.