At the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) or Frankfurter Buchmesse, the FBF-funded LitProm association canceled that year’s LiBeraturpreis for Palestinian writer Adania Shibli “due to the war started by Hamas.” This “war” referred to the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, which Zionists and their supporters have since used to justify Israel’s decimation of Palestine. Shortly after the cancellation of the awarding, the FBF released a statement saying that it wishes to “make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair” and that “Frankfurter Buchmesse stands with complete solidarity on the side of Israel.”
In indignant response, publishers including the Arab Publishers Association, the Emirates Publishers Association, and the Sharjah Book Authority withdrew from participating at the FBF. Indonesia and Malaysia also announced country boycotts.
Immediately after the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, Publishers for Palestine was convened, and the international network promptly released a Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, condemning the silencing of Palestinian voices in publishing and the media and the killing of journalists in Gaza. The statement also called to stop the genocide, hold Israel and its allies accountable for their war crimes, uphold the call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, and center Palestinian voices in the publishing industry.
At the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was awarded to Anne Applebaum, a writer who has claimed that Palestinian journalists were “combatant” and therefore “legitimate targets” of Israeli soldiers. It was also announced then that the Philippines would be the next Guest of Honor at the FBF, in 2025.
Citing the FBF’s support of Israel and its close relationships with the genocide-complicit German government and multibillion-dollar publishing multinationals with massive investments in Israeli tech, AI, and surveillance, Publishers for Palestine called for a Boycott of the Frankfurt Book Fair in January 2025. The network began sending out emails to past participants of the FBF urging them to boycott. (Out of the fifty or so emails that Gantala Press sent to Southeast Asian publishers, only one, Ethos Books of Singapore, replied, saying they will stand with Publishers for Palestine. Ethos has since published Walid Jumblatt Abdullah’s brilliant primer, Why Palestine? Reflections from Singapore.)
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States resulted in 13 US military bases in the country as of 2023. The 2024 and 2025 Balikatan military exercises became the biggest iterations so far, with 14,000 troops from the US, Australia, and Japan participating in 2025 and the latest weapons and military vehicles from Israel being showcased.
The discussion surrounding the boycott of Frankfurt Book Fair began to intensify locally in March, when Israel violated the ceasefire agreement and launched surprise attacks on Gaza. On International Children’s Book Day on April 2, Gantala Press, Publishers for Palestine, and Paper Trail Projects organized an online discussion about the boycott. This was followed by several on-site discussions including those facilitated by the University of the Philippines Writers Club in April, the UP Institute of Creative Writing in June, and the Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association in August.
Counterfairs were organized, most notably the second Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair held simultaneously with the FBF in October. Taking place in tents just outside the FBF venue, it featured a panel discussion on the shared people’s struggles in Palestine and the Philippines as well as an exhibition of Palestine-related artworks by Filipino artists. In the Philippines, the Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices and Better Living Through Xeroxography organized mini-counterfairs also on the week of the FBF, with discussions and selling and trading of Palestine-related books and zines. Elsewhere, the annual Literal PRO Radical Book Fair in Barcelona has centered Palestine in its recent versions, and so has the Babelica Online Book Fair organized by the International Alliance of Independent Publishers taking place every September.
Writers and publishers said that they began receiving invitations to join the Philippine delegation at the 2025 FBF in May of this year. Invitees began publicly posting on whether they are accepting the invitation or joining the call to boycott, fomenting an active discussion on social media. Later that month, Philippines-as-GOH principal Senator Loren Legarda facilitated a consultation with writers and publishers on the boycott. The meeting was followed by a joint statement from the publisher organizers of the FBF Guest of Honor stint, recognizing “the moral clarity and deep conviction” behind the call to boycott, and at the same time affirming that “Our presence at the Fair will not be detached from the world’s pain, but an engagement with it.”
A handful of Filipino writers and publishers withdrew from participating at the Fair, and about 300 writers, artists, publishers, art collectives, writers’ groups, literary journals, and other organizations in the Philippines and abroad signed a boycott statement released by Gantala Press in early October. Still, the Philippine delegation consisting of at least 100 writers, publishers, and artists including National Artists and Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa set sail for Frankfurt. As a delegate indicated, “There was spirited and largely respectful debate over this issue, but it was clear to both sides from the outset that a complete disengagement from the FBM—for which we had planned for many years running—was not going to happen.” The same prominent writers that dismissed and even criticized the call to boycott later made self-congratulatory posts on social media, with one insisting that the FBF is “a much larger platform … to speak for freedom and justice.” Another participant enthusiastically shared that “if I want to reach more Filipino readers, I have to go international and then come back,” echoing the elitist, colonial, and ultimately shortsighted sentiment that only when artists are internationally validated can they be appreciated in the Philippines. Delegates also pointed out the accommodations that the GOH stint made for Palestinian voices, such as the panel discussion on “relational solidarity” involving two Palestinian writers and “trauma journalist” Patricia Evangelista’s speech condemning the killing of Palestinian journalists.
To these token accommodations, may I quickly respond by echoing Ismail Salahuddin’s critique of Arundhati Roy publishing her memoir under Penguin, the same corporation that published fascist Asian leaders and invested in Israeli tech companies active in Gaza. (I would like to thank my friend Chingbee Cruz for this lead.) Salahuddin wrote,
“What we are witnessing is not just personal hypocrisy but a larger truth about how dissent is managed in our times. The system does not silence every critic. Instead, it domesticates some of them. It allows them to speak loudly, but through safe channels. Their words become performances of resistance that pose no real threat. This is what Edward Said warned of when he spoke about the ‘co-optation of intellectuals.’ Resistance becomes one more commodity, an exotic spice in the banquet of empire.”
Salahuddin continues:
“In this way, rebellion and propaganda sit side by side on the same shelf. The consumer can buy both. The market wins either way”.
A more exhaustive critique of the Guest of Honor endeavor is due for another time (but we can start with Gabriel Pascua’s sharp analytic pieces, as in here), but it is worth reiterating (again and again) that the call to boycott is endorsed by the Palestinian-led Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, founded in 2004. To boycott is primarily a political act, requiring real sacrifice for some (I know of at least three foreign independent presses that chose to boycott despite the huge economic loss). It is directly heeding the Palestinians’ actual call, which has been their call for decades. To dismiss the call to boycott as mere self-righteous moral posturing reflects a narrow, bourgeois, and individualistic perspective that is nothing but malicious and harmful to any collective act of resistance and solidarity. And the Philippines’ own history of anti-colonialist struggle, which the Philippine pavilion at the 2025 FBF even referred to, shows that resistance is more effective if it is communal rather than solitary.
The Boycott Frankfurt Book Fair campaign has forced Philippine literary and cultural institutions to declare where they stand on the Palestine issue, which turns out to be the same with the Philippine government that remains a staunch ally of both Israel and the United States. The Philippines was the only Asian country that voted for the partition of Palestine in 1947, and in 2025 Marcos Jr reiterated the government’s support for a two-state solution.
On the flip side, the boycott campaign also became an opportunity for the public to reflect on other social issues such as the import-dependent, export-oriented publishing industry in the Philippines; the prevalence of colonial mentality even among intellectuals, where cultural validity, legitimacy, and value are sought in international, still mostly Western capitalistic platforms; and the possibilities of dissent and resistance from small and local independent publishers and creators. In forums, statements, press articles, and Facebook posts, the role of culture in settler colonialism and genocide was exposed. October is also Peasant Month, and the Palestinian’s defense of their land was connected to Filipino farmers’ long struggle for genuine land reform. The Palestinian flag waved proudly at the Independence Day rally in June, and at the massive September 21 rally in Luneta against corruption.
The need for more Filipino translators of Palestinian literature was highlighted in independent publications such as “Saring-Daloy: Mga Anti-Imperyalistang Tula at Saling Tula ng mga Bakla Para sa Palestina” and ’Pagkat Tayo Man ay May Sampaga: New Philippine Writing and Translation for a Free Palestine. Palestine-related zines from abroad were also printed locally and exchanged in zine-trading sessions organized by small presses.
But more importantly, the Boycott Frankfurt Book Fair campaign has led to the organization of artists, cultural workers, and young people around the Palestine issue in particular and for larger social movements in general. Networks such as SALAM Palestine (Solidarity of Art, Literature, Academia, and Media for Palestine), Komikeros for Palestine, and Mindanao Book Workers for Palestine were consolidated. They join organizations like the Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association, Ateneo 4 Palestine, and Filipino Youth for Palestine in advancing Filipino-Palestinian solidarity calling to end the genocide and for the sustained anti-imperialist struggle in Palestine, the Philippines, and internationally.
What we need to emphasize is that boycotting the Frankfurt Book Fair does not end this year, in 2025, when the Philippines is Guest of Honor. We must boycott Frankfurt Book Fair and all complicit institutions until Palestine is liberated, and this will need a deeper and sustained understanding of and engagement with the issue which will hopefully lead to a stronger and wider commitment to the struggle against imperialism, that enormous monster that Palestinian revolutionary and writer Ghassan Kanafani said “has laid its body over the world.” Likewise, we should not stop at simply boycotting. Writers and cultural workers should continuously hold the Philippine government accountable for its complicity in the genocide, and demand government institutions to use the people’s money on projects that truly advance mass literacy and local literary production and publishing, not projects that are biased on the side of profit-driven big publishers or elitist writers in English. Let us call on the government to completely cut off political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties with Israel and to join the Hague Group, “a global bloc of states committed to ‘coordinated legal and diplomatic measures’ in defense of international law and solidarity with the people of Palestine.” Let us join and endorse the International People’s Tribunal on the US-Backed Zionist Occupation’s War of Forced Starvation and Ecocide in Palestine taking place in Barcelona in November. As the Tribunal said, “The genocidal assault on the Palestinian people demands universal outrage and unconditional solidarity from all the people and countries of the world.”
We should discern how the imperialist agenda is perpetrated not only in Palestine and Sudan and the Latin American countries (for that matter) but also in the Philippines, and we need to fight this with our art, our scholarship, our warm bodies and voices in mobilizations if we refuse to be the next Gaza. Let us join people’s organizations that may not necessarily be focusing on Palestine, but also fight for a liberatory culture, self-sufficiency and national sovereignty in the various sectors. Let us continue to read, translate, write, and publish about Palestine, because literature is memory, literature bears history, and literature helps create the future, a future where, from the river to the sea, Palestine is free! //
A shortened version of this piece was read by Faye Cura at “Global South Action for Palestine: A Symposium Engaging The Hague Group” held on Oct. 29, Wednesday, 2 p.m., at the GT-Toyota Asian Center Auditorium, UP Diliman.
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