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110 Comics Workers Sign Petition / Bondoux Refuses / Op-Ed by Organizers In French Newsweekly

An open letter addressed to the head of the of the Angouleme International Comics Festival and the broader comics industry demanding an end to “business as usual” with Israel has reached 110 signers as the Festival opened on January 29th, including Alison Bechdel, Jaime Hernandez, Ben Katchor, 2013 Grand Prix winner and Charlie Hebdo contributor Willem, 2012 Grand Prix winner François Schuiten, 2010 Grand Prix winner Baru, 1984 Grand Prix winner Mézières, Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle (author of Jerusalem and special guest at the 2014 Palestine Comics festival), and Lucille Gomez, the cartoonist hired to draw comics by Sodastream at the 2014 Festival.

The full letter and updated list of signatories can be found here.

The letter specifically calls out the Angouleme Festival’s relationship with the Israeli company Sodastream, which operates manufacturing plants in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and in the Naqab desert region of Israel. Franck Bondoux, the director of the Festival, who in 2014 denied that Sodastream operated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this week shifted his defense and claimed it was inappropriate to talk about Palestinian rights due to recent events in France. He was quoted in the French newspaper Sud Ouest on January 23:

“We are no longer in the same situation as last year,” remarked Bondoux, whom we reached last night. “SodaStream announced in 2014 that the factory under discussion will be moved. This means that the problem is in process of being resolved and has been understood.” The executive director of the festival further believes that the letter “moves into a broader proposal with terminology that goes much farther in its call for a boycott.” “We have moved from a discussion where one speaks of a specific problem to a total generality.” “This is an incitement to a stronger, more militant form of resistance.” Bondoux refuses to “judge” or “comment” if only to say “that in the current situation [reference to Charlie Hebdo and Kosher supermarket attacks], I’m not certain whether this is a time to welcome such proposals.”

Organizers of the open letter, Ethan Heitner (NYC) and Dror Warschawski (Paris) published a response to Bondoux in the French newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur.

Open letter and signatories: lettertoangouleme.tumblr.com

To add your name: lettertoangouleme@gmail.com