When a group of around 20 Canadian authors took a bold stand against the artwashing of genocide in the summer of 2024, they were quickly brushed off or derided by voices in mainstream media.
The authors, who called their campaign CanLit Responds, withdrew their books from consideration for the Giller Prize, demanding that the prestigious literary organization end its partnership with its lead sponsor Scotiabank — an institution heavily invested in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.
A National Post column dismissed the boycott as “hashtag activism,” while a Globe column described the campaign as “self-defeating” and “illogical,” insinuating (without evidence) that the attacks on the Giller were motivated by hate.
But despite the early hostility, the campaign continued to build momentum as hundreds of authors, publishers and other book workers joined the boycott. Less than a year later, the Giller Foundation announced it had ended its decades-long partnership with Scotiabank, kicking a dent in the powerful bank’s reputation.
Fast forward to today, and cultural boycotts are a key part of the movement for Palestinian liberation in Canada, now encompassing a broad coalition of authors, art workers, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights, dancers and visual artists, many of whom have organized under the banner of No Arms in the Arts (NAITA).
“There hasn’t been something like this in a long time,” says Mitra Fakhrashrafi, a curator and organizer with Artists Against Artwashing, a group of visual artists affiliated with NAITA.
“Artists are usually asked to only think of themselves as individuals, forced to cling onto scraps in industries we have less and less agency over.”
NAITA, Fakhrashrafi explains, has built up a coalition that helps artists see themselves as part of a collective — one that confronts funders making their money from war and the arts institutions that launder the reputations of war profiteers. And there have been many small, but significant victories.
Months after the Giller ended its sponsorship with Scotiabank, the Hot Docs International Film Festival dropped the bank from its name and confirmed it would cut ties with the sponsor after its 2025 festival. In October, Toronto’s largest international art fair confirmed that it was no longer sponsored by AXA, a multinational insurance giant with substantial investments in weapons companies linked to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, Scotiabank subsidiary 1832 Asset Management has divested hundreds of millions of dollars from Elbit Systems since 2023, though the subsidiary still holds a stake valued at nearly $84 million.
But as Israel continues to violate the ceasefire and ramp up its colonial violence in the West Bank, arts organizers remain clear-eyed about the long road ahead.
“We are gaining momentum and it’s not the time to slow down,” says Natasha Greenblatt, a theatre maker and organizer with Theatre Artist for Palestinian Voices (TAPV). “Cultural boycotts are a small part of a bigger movement. I don’t think the arts sector alone is going to get Israel to end a genocide, or stop apartheid, but I think it has a role to play and we have to be very clear to our institutions that we won’t accept complicity with genocide in the arts.”
The mainstreaming of Israeli cultural boycotts
For decades, Palestinian civil society has called for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel as a non-violent strategy to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestine. Across the world, non-government groups and individuals have adopted different boycott and divestment strategies, depending on their local conditions, often drawing guidance from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee.
Muhannad Ayyash, a professor of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary, says that these boycott and divestment strategies are among the most meaningful courses of action for those looking to support Palestinian liberation internationally.
“You’re not going to convince Israel to stop its genocidal campaign in Gaza or its larger structure of apartheid by asking them nicely,” Ayyash tells The Grind. “You have to put material pressure on a settler colonial force, or any other aggressive political project.”
The movement, however, has faced fierce political opposition in Canada and the West. In 2016, the Canadian Parliament voted to “reject” the BDS movement, claiming that BDS promotes the “demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel.” The motion called upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote it.
For years, BDS and other cultural boycott campaigns were fairly marginal, existing mainly on university campuses, among individuals and being suppressed within arts institutions. But in recent months, the movement has moved firmly into the mainstream, while cultural boycotts have become part of the common parlance in North America.
Today, more than 1,000 international writers and publishing professionals — including Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy and Rachel Kushner — have boycotted Israeli cultural institutions.
Meanwhile, thousands of actors, directors and filmmakers — including A-listers like Ava DuVernay, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem — have also signed a pledge vowing not to work with Israeli film institutions “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
Just last month, hundreds of musicians, from Lorde to Björk, joined the No Music for Genocide campaign, which urges artists to geo-block their music from streaming in Israel. And within the world of electronic music, artists and fans have begun to boycott Boiler Room after the popular music company was purchased by a private equity company with investments tied to Israeli occupation. Spoiler Room, a counter-event to Boiler Room, started in Toronto and has spread to other cities around the world, raising money for Palestinian causes.
Of course, within organizing circles, there remain debates about the effectiveness of different boycotts. For Greenblatt, the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is an example of a “proactive, rather than reactive” campaign. It requires organizations to think about who their funders and collaborators are to ensure their arts programming isn’t complicit with apartheid or genocide.
Here in Canada, nearly 100 cultural organizations have committed to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) — a decades-old campaign launched by the Palestinian BDS National Committee — including 45 theatre and dance companies. “That would have been unheard of four years ago,” says Greenblatt, the TAPV organizer.
TAPV was founded in 2023 by theatre and performing arts workers who wanted to “break the silence” around Palestine in the sector and push back against the censorship and fear they felt.
“We believe that part of the dehumanization of Palestinian people has been caused by the lack of Palestinian voices and stories on our stages,” Greenblatt explains. “That has contributed to Israel’s ability to act with impunity.”
And while they have found success with smaller theatre companies, there remains a lot of pushback among the industry’s big hitters.
“We’re still having to hold people’s feet to the fire. There are many people who share our values, but are afraid to come out publicly at a time when anti-semitism is being so weaponized,” says Greenblatt, who is Jewish.
“And there still hasn’t been a Palestinian play programmed by a Toronto theatre company since 2023, and almost none across Canada, despite there being so many incredibly talented Palestinian playwrights in this country. As a theatre person, that’s shocking to me.”
Taking on the foundations
Beyond weapons manufacturers, arts organizers have also tried to call attention to Zionist foundations and funders complicit in normalizing Israel’s settler-colonial project and the erasure of Palestine.
In recent years, the cultural sector has struggled to stay afloat amid declining public funding and audience attrition in the wake of the pandemic. This climate has created conditions where artists are more at risk of censorship or silencing at the hands of private funders who don’t want to see criticism of Israel.
“These foundations have taken on culture, arts, and letters as a valuable battleground for the project of normalizing Zionism in all various ways, from both shaping their narrative to collaborations with the Israeli state or other complicit parties,” Fakhrashrafi explains. “In many ways, they were the ones who have been choosing this battleground, and culture workers are simply responding accordingly.”
Chief among those being targeted by groups like NAITA and TAPV is the $2-billion Azrieli Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Azrieli Group, an Israeli real estate company with investments in banks that profit off of illegal settlements in Palestine.
The Azrieli Foundation has also funded explicitly Zionist organizations, such as Honest Reporting Canada, which has led hundreds of campaigns targeting journalists, artists and educators speaking clearly about Palestine (this author included).
In response to these campaigns, the Azrieli Foundation previously said that it is an “apolitical, independent, public, Canadian foundation … and a wholly independent entity from the Azrieli Group.”
For organizers like Fakhrashrafi, the challenge lies in maintaining pressure on these organizations, even as Gaza appears less in the headlines.
“Scotiabank’s links to Israel’s major arms manufacturer [Elbit Systems] easily registers to wide audiences as bad,” Fakhrashrafi says. “But the function of Zionism in Canada by way of financing a settler colonial project that facilitates genocide not as a singular event but as a prolonged condition of man-made catastrophe takes more time to work through among our peers.”
It’s not an easy leap for many to make, Greenblatt admits, but she remains hopeful.
“We used to have a Du Maurier Center for the Arts, which would be unthinkable today,” she says, referencing the theatre venue in Toronto previously named after a cigarette company, now known as the Harbourfront Centre. “And I believe it should be unthinkable to have support from a foundation connected to genocide.”
This article appeared in the 2025 Dec – 2026 Jan issue.
