New York, March 15 (RHC)-- Prominent writers including Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, Hisham Matar, Isabella Hammad and Zaina Arafat have announced they will not participate in this year’s PEN World Voices Festival for failing to appropriately respond to Israel’s “cultural genocide” in Gaza. 

The authors write: “Israel has also killed nearly 100 academics and writers.  If organizations like PEN America cling to the illusion of political neutrality in the face of a clear effort to destroy Palestinian lives and culture, one can only wonder whether there will be any writers left in Gaza to tell the story of their apocalypse, or to trust words and speech, when the killing finally ends.  Or any record left of the history they have lived.”