SPEAKING at the Edinburgh International Book Festival is the highlight of many writers’ years. I’ve been invited three times before and remember fondly the famous authors’ yurt, the long conversations that thread through the day and often carried on out into the town at night.

But in all those times at Edinburgh I never thought too much about the two words so prominent on every programme: Baillie Gifford. A sponsor, like any other, but what was it? A local building society, a bank? I didn’t think too much about it.

Then last year I saw the investigation in The Ferret that Baillie Gifford – which turns out to be an asset manager – has significant holdings in oil and gas companies. Next, the climate activist Greta Thunberg (below) cancelled her participation at Edinburgh.

Next, a letter from some 50 authors – Ali Smith and Zadie Smith among them – saying they would no longer attend future festivals without a sustainable sponsor. I remember an inspirational video of authors inviting their audience to leave the sponsored tent altogether and continue their event outside.

I know how hard it is to run a literary festival. As well as being an author I’m the director of the Palestine Festival of Literature. When this latest Israeli assault on Gaza began it became clear pretty quickly we would not be able to put on our annual festival in Palestine. There have been no public events in Ramallah or Nablus or Jerusalem or Bethlehem for months.

Since October I have been in touch daily with writers in Gaza trying to get out, trying to keep their families safe – and always writing, trying to communicate to the outside world what is happening to them, trying to connect.

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Writing is an act of connection between the consciousnesses of two people – the writer and a reader. Literary festivals exist, in principle, to increase those connections.

I was surprised, then, to learn not only that Edinburgh International Book Festival and Baillie Gifford’s relationship was continuing on, business as usual, as if it didn’t matter they were losing their very foundation: the authors.

I was less surprised to learn that Baillie Gifford’s portfolio included not only Chinese, Norwegian and Brazilian oil firms, but a collection of companies that profit from Israel’s colonization of Palestine.

Baillie Gifford has, or has recently had, holdings in Booking.com, which advertises properties in illegal Israeli settlements built in the West Bank; in Nvidia, which is building Israel’s “AI supercomputer” and markets its products for military use; in CyberArk, a key component of Israel’s “unique ecosystem of government agencies, academia, and industry” according to its CEO; in Amazon and Alphabet, which maintain Israel’s Project Nimbus, a bespoke cloud computing system for the Israeli government and military; and in Cemex, the Mexican cement giant so involved in the settlement industry that it’s on the United Nation’s list of companies profiting from the occupation of the West Bank.

Joining Fossil Free Books was easy – there’s a website, a public email address, well-organised and polite WhatsApp groups and a weekly meeting for new members.

My first meeting was full of names I recognised, authors whose work I’d read and admired, names I’d seen on critics’ lists and festival line-ups, authors who I’d seen read at solidarity events for other causes. It was a dynamic, positive group of people all animated and giving freely of their time out of a core belief: that our cultural scene in the UK cannot be being directly financed by the genocide of another people. It certainly cannot be dependent on it.

But what about the UK Government? Is not our entire country built upon the genocides of other people? And what about Amazon, are not our books sold on there? We are so entangled with centuries of complicity, not of our choosing, that it is too easy to shrug and say that this is simply how things are.

But what drew attention to Baillie Gifford, in particular, was this: they sponsored not one, not two, but nine literary festivals in the UK. Why? What is it that they want from us?

I looked through the authors scheduled to speak at the Hay Festival – also sponsored by Baillie Gifford – and wondered how many of them knew much about this sponsor?

Headline speakers like Caroline Lucas, George Monbiot, Miriam Margolyes – do they know that Baillie Gifford is an asset manager choosing to maintain a portfolio that includes three companies on the United Nation’s list of settlement profiteers? That includes Scottish dockyard, Babcock, which is in direct business with Israel’s most notorious weapons company, Elbit.

I wondered how much the Hay Festival staff were aware? I assumed that, like I had for so many years in Edinburgh, people just did not know what these words “Baillie Gifford” even meant. I began writing to authors I knew, sharing the information.

Every single one replied, each with their own ideas. Some wanted to read a statement, some wanted more information, some wanted to cancel their participation, others wanted to join the Fossil Free Books WhatsApp group. Soon the information was moving – and soon people started knowing what Baillie Gifford is.

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The hope from the authors was always the same: for the asset manager to re-arrange its portfolio and to drop its holdings in these companies. The asset manager, instead, dropped the festivals. Baillie Gifford cancelled all its sponsorship of all the literary festivals. At this point, negative coverage began, all with the same refrain: where will the festivals now find their money?

As I said, I know how hard it is to run a festival, and how hard it is to fundraise. Anyone running an arts organisation is fundraising all the time. So I also know when a lament is disingenuous. It’s been reported that Baillie Gifford’s total sponsorship of all nine festivals amounted to £1 million. So that’s an average of £110,000 per festival.

If an organisation can’t find a hundred grand without being OK with genocide then, yes, that organisation should probably not exist. The Edinburgh Festival announced that the loss of Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship would prevent them from “providing free books” for children.

That’s unfortunate, but when 15,000 children have been killed in Gaza, every single school damaged, every university destroyed it is not a hard moral calculation to make. What choice do we think the children of Scotland would make, if they were told that one less book for them could potentially save the life of another child?

Literature festivals will continue to exist. I know that the authors in Fossil Free Books have made clear to all the festivals that they stand ready to work shoulder to shoulder with them, and in fact already secured a £100,000 donation from Bloomsbury Publishing to be shared with all nine festivals.

The festivals must take this moral stance of authors seriously and together press the new government for renewed arts funding; we must promote initiatives like Oil Sponsorship Free and use resources like Fossil Free Funds to develop new corporate sponsors while working to find more local sponsors – 20 local businesses can replace one faceless asset manager.

It won’t be easy, but none of it is. I also know how hard it is to write a book. Getting invited to Hay or Edinburgh is often the peak of a young writer’s year, and refusing that invitation is not easy.

But it is also the bare minimum – and people boycott in the belief that our tiny sacrifices combine into a collective change. Our culture is always being built and re-built by us all, together.

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This story is all about choices. Probably every story is. Here, an asset manager chooses where to invest other people’s money. A festival chooses which sponsors to approach. An author chooses which invitations to accept. But only of those choices has been interrogated relentlessly in the media – that of the authors choosing to withhold their labour.

Below my Fossil Free Books chat on WhatsApp, I have new messages this morning from Jehad Abu Dayya, a poet trapped in Gaza. He has sent me a new video, reading a new poem he wrote on his phone, sitting on the ruins of a building destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

He has been homeless since November, moving with his family from camp to camp every few days, trying to study for his medical exams, a poet-doctor in waiting. Jehad believes in poetry, believes in culture, in connecting with new readers. Will he survive until the end of this year’s Edinburgh Festival? As long as next year’s? If we cannot free him, the least we can do is not sing for his bombmakers.

Omar Robert Hamilton is an author, editor and the director of the Palestine Festival of Literature.