Annie Ernaux has joined the boycott of German cultural institutions.

More than 500 global writers, artists, filmmakers, and cultural workers (including Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and Palestinian poet and activist Mohammed el Kurd) are boycotting German state funded associations in response to what El Kurd has called Germany’s “McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine.” “At a time when Palestinians are being slaughtered by a Germany backed army at an unprecedented rate, and at a time of rising totalitarianism in German institutions, it is more important now than ever that good people reject anti Palestinian racism assertively and publicly, and boycott the organizations that spread or give cover to that racism,” El Kurd told .

“There can be no business as usual during genocide and there can be no collaboration with those who deny, justify or partake in the Israeli genocidal campaign currently waged on the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip. It’s our moral responsibility.” Called Strike Germany, the protest aims to bring attention to , as well as to the country’s increasingly isolated —which to date has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, at least 10,000 of them children.

In lending her support to this movement, 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Ernaux—a longtime supporter of the and —becomes one of the highest profile literary figures to publicly condemn Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. El Kurd—who left a master’s degree in the United States in 2021 in order to return home and protest Israel’s eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank—has, , spent the last three years campaigning to raise global awareness on Israeli policies in East Jerusalem.

Other artists involved in Strike Germany are American actress Indya Moore, British Turner Prize winner Tai Shani, and Lebanese alternative rock singer Hamed Sinno..