In his article (Our Baillie Gifford boycotts aren’t about tearing down the arts – they’re about building them up, 27 June), Tom Jeffreys writes: “The furore over festival funding is obscuring the real issue here, which is that in the last nine months Israel has slaughtered more than 37,000 people in Gaza.” I agree. Fossil Free Books has caused the furore, but without leading to divestment from either Israel or the oil and gas sector, merely the divestment from literary festivals. Surely a blow for justice and the environment so tangential as to be useless.
Jeffreys is confident that pure, alternative sources of arts funding are available. This is not the case. Fossil Free Books has heightened the risk of sponsoring the arts. Now that Baillie Gifford has walked away, I doubt anyone else will want to drink from that poisoned chalice.
Fossil Free Books’ assessment of Baillie Gifford’s links with Israel is deeply flawed: $100m invested in Amazon does not equal $100m invested in Israel’s repression. Meanwhile, the books of many authors supporting these boycotts are available on Amazon.
Finbarr O’Mahony
Taunton, Somerset
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