Viet Thanh Nguyen feels the need to clarify a thing or two. In November, a Hebrew translation of the Vietnamese-American writer’s 2017 short story collection “The Refugees” was released by the Israeli publishing house Babel Publishers. But this came just weeks after he had joined over 1,000 prominent authors — including Arundhati Roy, Sally Rooney, and Ocean Vuong — in signing a call to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers.
The signatories vowed to refuse collaboration with institutions that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid, or genocide,” or that have “never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.” Suddenly, Nguyen found himself violating his own pledge when it mattered most, as Israel’s onslaught on Gaza continued to devastate the strip, killing over 45,000 Palestinians and wounding more than 106,000 others. …more