I am Faye Cura, publisher of Gantala Press which is a member of the Publishers for Palestine network.
I would like to take this opportunity to share exactly how the Frankfurt Book Fair is complicit in the genocide and why a Boycott is the best course of action for publishers. Data comes from a comprehensive report by Mondoweiss.
The Fair is deeply entangled with the German state, which is the second biggest supplier of weapons to Israel. Funding comes from the German government along with contracts and registrations from exhibitors and attendees. So by attending the complicit Fair and as its Guest of Honor, the Philippines has also contributed financial and cultural support to the genocide.
Multinational publishing corporations which prop the Fair up on its feet have a deep connection with the Israeli government. Two of the “Big Five” publishing corporations, Macmillan Publishers and Penguin Random House, are owned by the German multinationals Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Bertelsmann SE & Co.L. Holtzbrinck owns 400 companies around the world, and holds many millions of investments in Israeli tech, AI, surveillance, and security technologies. Holtzbrinck hosts the Frankfurt Book Fair’s Jerusalem International Book Forum Breakfast, a long-standing annual event at the Fair; it has donated to Israeli fellowship programs and museums, and invests in popular journals, newspapers and magazines.
Bertelsmann is one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, owning Penguin, media corporations, music labels, IT and finance corporations, and a number of sub-corporations in education, printing, and broadcasting. It also has extensive investments and partnerships in Israeli tech, AI, surveillance, and security technologies. A statement on the Bertelsmann website from October 23, 2023 reads: “We stand unwaveringly by the side of our Israeli friends and partners as well as the State of Israel. Over the decades, Bertelsmann and Israel have developed close and extremely stable ties of friendship. Our unreserved solidarity goes out to the people of Israel.”
The Messe Frankfurt, which is the venue of the Fair, has an Israel subsidiary and hosts various conventions, including Intersec that has featured Israeli drone, surveillance, and military technology. This is of particular significance to the Philippines as one of the largest buyers of weapons from Israel that are used in the state’s counter-insurgency program and in the United States’ provocation of war with China, as demonstrated in the recent Balikatan exercises that featured Israeli defense systems. As shown in Antony Loewenstein’s study, “Israeli tech and surveillance industries are developed and used aggressively against Palestinian life, forming testing grounds for brutal military expansionist projects elsewhere.” The Messe Frankfurt has also hosted the annual German Israel Congress, described as “Europe’s largest pro-Israel event.”
We see here just some ways of how Israel and its backers such as Germany and the US utilize culture in their militaristic imperialist agendas. With the Fair’s explicit support of Israel, seen in both repeated declarations and in its programming, it contributes to the erasure of Palestinians, and to the normalization, disguising, and denial of Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians. The Boycott is called by the Palestinians themselves and genuine solidarity is expressed through unequivocal, unconditional support of the Boycott. We need to pressure Israel and its allies to end the genocide. Participation in the Fair despite knowledge of its complicity and token rhetoric of being pro-Palestinian dilutes the power of a solid Boycott, especially from publishers from the Guest of Honor country. May their imagination be peopled by specters of the tens of thousands of Palestinians massacred by Israel. To Boycott the Fair is the politically strategic and moral thing to do.
Statement read at the meeting with the National Book Development Board and Senator Loren Legarda, May 27, 2025. Revised.
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