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More than 1,000 Entertainment Giants Condemn Attempted Boycott of Israeli Publishers
(Jewish News-UK) Jenni Frazer - More than 1,000 leading names in the literary world and entertainment industry - ranging from the music world's Sharon and Ozzie Osbourne to French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy - have hit back at an attempt by some writers in the industry to boycott Israeli-linked publishers, book festivals and publications. Prizewinning author Howard Jacobson said he was "staggered" that the signers of the original petition by the Palestine Festival of Literature and Fossil Free Books could dream that they had a right to silence other writers. Signers of the counter-letter include Mayim Bialik, Sir Simon Schama, Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, actors Debra Messing, Rebecca de Mornay, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and film and TV names such as Amy Sherman-Palladino and Sherry Lansing, the former head of Paramount Pictures, together with Lee Child, Lionel Shriver, and Gene Simmons, the lead singer of the band, Kiss. Sebag-Montefiore said: "History is full of examples of self-righteous cadres of self-appointed judges who tried to enforce their version of purity by excluding people. Whatever one thinks of this tragic Middle Eastern war, who judges who is good, who bad? Once started, where would it stop? Who is pure enough?"