Giller Prize drops sponsor Scotiabank following anti-Israel campaign

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The Giller Foundation ended its relationship with its main sponsor Scotiabank on Monday, following a prolonged pressure campaign by anti-Israel activists, who are still calling for the organization to drop additional sponsors.

The foundation did not say why it was ending its partnership with Scotiabank, which helped grow its prestigious literary prize to $100,000, but anti-Israel protesters have taken issue with the bank’s investment in Elbit Systems, an Israeli manufacturer of drone systems and other defence technologies.

“We are indebted to Scotiabank for their exceptional commitment over the past two decades,” Giller Foundation executive director Elana Rabinovitch told National Post in a written statement. “As the Giller Foundation embarks on the next stage of its journey, it remains committed to celebrating and promoting Canadian literature.”

When asked to speak in greater detail on Tuesday, Rabinovitch told the Post, “I won’t be making any further comments.”

Scotiabank told other media that the bank has no comment.

Some fiction writers denounced the Giller Foundation’s decision as a capitulation that will further embolden intolerant activists. “Dear @GillerPrize please stop lurching leftward to try and accommodate the ideologically captured, censorious, illiberal literary-activists. Nothing makes them stop, you will never be pure enough. Every sponsor is suspect. They are destroying the Canadian arts. Stand up to them,” fiction writer Hal Niedzviecki wrote on X following the news.

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Ian Brodie, a University of Calgary professor and author who served as chief of staff under former prime minister Stephen Harper, called the move “disappointing” in a post on X.

“Scotiabank’s sponsorship of literary arts is admirable,” he wrote.

The Giller Prize has been a political flashpoint since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7. Barely a month after the atrocities, a November 2023 award ceremony was disrupted by anti-Israel protesters carrying signs saying, “Scotiabank funds genocide.”

Shortly after the incident, CanLit, a literary group formed to support the protesters and spearhead a boycott campaign against the Giller Prize, circulated an open letter denouncing Israel’s war against Hamas, without referencing the Palestinian terror group, and equating civilians abducted on October 7 with Palestinians in jail in Israel.

CanLit made considerable inroads over the following months. Throughout the first half of 2024, Scotiabank began quietly shrinking its position in Elbit Systems, halving its overall investment by May. Tensions continued throughout the summer, with some authors boycotting the Giller Prize and withdrawing their books from consideration. In November 2024, demonstrators again picketed the fall awards ceremony.

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CanLit celebrated Monday’s announcement, saying it was “the result of over a year of pressure from the public and the literary community.”

CanLit is now targeting two other Giller Prize sponsors, the Azrieli Foundation, which prominently features Holocaust survivor memoirs, and Indigo Books, led by Heather Reisman.

“One sponsor down. Two to go,” the group pledged in its Monday statement.

CanLit says Azrieli has invested in a large Israeli bank with ties to supporting settlements in disputed territories, while Indigo has been accused of directly supporting and funding the Israeli army through its work with the HESEG Foundation, which was co-founded by Reisman and her husband, Gerry Schwartz.

Those charges were echoed by the Globe and Mail in its Monday report about the latest development, prompting the paper to issue an editor’s note and correction shortly after publication. Reisman clarified in a phone conversation Tuesday morning that the HESEG Foundation’s work provides academic assistance to so-called “lone soldiers,” emigrants without family or relatives in Israel, following their military enlistments.

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“The statement in the Globe about what the HESEG Foundation funds was totally incorrect and we appreciate (the Globe’s) full and swift retraction,” Reisman said.

“Notwithstanding the mistruth that some people have tried to perpetrate consistently for well over a year, HESEG does not and never did fund the IDF,” the Indigo founder added, noting the foundation funds “scholarships for students who have been accepted to university and either have no family or whose family are unable to provide financial support.”

The prestigious Giller Prize was established in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch, Elana’s father, as a namesake for his late wife, journalist Doris Giller.

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