Watkins Media is a UK-based independent publisher, whose imprints include Repeater, Angry Robot, Nourish, Moon + Bird and Datura Books.

The CEO and owner of Watkins is Etan Ilfeld, an Israeli venture capitalist.

It has recently come to light that Ifeld is an investor with Reimagine Futures, an Israeli AI technology company that has collaborated with Unit 8200, a division of the Israeli Intelligence Corps within the IDF.

Furthermore, when Repeater Books, a Watkins imprint, signed the Publishers for Palestine statement in October 2023, Repeater were later forced to retract the signature, reportedly under direct instruction from Ilfeld.

Now, Watkins authors are requesting the rights to their books be returned to them, due to the risk that any profit from sales of books may - directly or indirectly - be reinvested in the growing use of AI technologies in the occupation and genocide of Palestinians. In response, Ilfeld has either refused to return rights or demanded that authors buy them back for thousands of pounds.

We know that Ilfeld’s actions are part of a wider pattern of attempts to intimidate, silence, and punish those in the arts and cultural sector who express solidarity with Palestine and call for an end to the genocide.

We speak out in solidarity with Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, murdered by an Israeli airstrike in 2023. We speak out in solidarity with the Palestinians journalists who risk their lives every day to bring truth to the world. We speak out in solidarity with Palestinian children, the future novelists, painters, sculptors and musicians, whose lives and creative potential have been stolen forever by Israeli bombs.

For this reason, we are now calling on authors, readers, booksellers, editors, artists and cultural workers and all those who support an end to the genocide and occupation of Palestine to boycott Watkins until the demands below are met.