Grim New Reality: Nice Words About the Jewish State Get You Blacklisted It can’t happen here—but it is.P. David Hornik
A few days ago an article about Jews and American publishing by Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large for Tablet, was posted on both the Hebrew and English websites of the Israeli daily Israel Hayom.
“A sampling of incidents,” says Leibovitz, “from just the past year demonstrates how American publishing—an industry that achieved its zenith in the 1950s and 60s under significant Jewish leadership—has devolved into an openly antisemitic environment that enables persecution of Jews without pretense.”
Among the samples included by Leibovitz, the American Jewish journalist James Kirchik
published an exposé in The New York Times revealing the crisis’s true depth…. Kirchick uncovered a list of over 200 editors, writers, and industry professionals suspected of excessive Jewish pride, complete with color coding to denote varying degrees of Zionism and support for Israel. Author Emily St. John Mandel, for instance, earned the dreaded “red” classification as a “Zionist” because, according to the list’s anonymous creators, she “frequently visits Israel and speaks positively about these visits.” Writer Kristin Hannah received the same designation for sharing a Magen David Adom donation link after Hamas’ [October 7] attack. And Gabrielle Zevin—author of bestsellers “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” and “Young Jane Young”—was placed in a slightly lower category of Israel supporters. Her offense? Speaking at a local chapter of Hadassah women’s organization….
One literary agent, speaking anonymously for fear of professional retaliation, told Kirchick, “Today it takes real courage to publish proudly Jewish authors or books about the Jewish experience. If you believe in Israel’s right to exist, the industry now considers it appropriate and desirable to completely cancel you.” Another author, also requesting anonymity, expressed concern that despite his new book containing no Jewish themes, reviewers and readers might boycott him simply for being proudly Jewish and appearing on one of these defamatory lists of Jewish authors.
Another case—and there are several more in the article—involves PEN America, which Leibovitz calls “perhaps the country’s largest and most influential writers’ organization”:
This February, over 1,500 organization members signed a letter demanding immediate condemnation of Israel and calling on the organization to “wake from its passive, lukewarm, fence-sitting, self-satisfied and mediocre approach and take concrete steps against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” After accusing Israel of systematic and deliberate murder without any factual support from writers or journalists, the letter left little doubt about required action, “We demand PEN America issue an official condemnation naming the killers exactly: Israel, a colonialist Zionist entity funded by the US government.”
…Even this proved insufficient: more than half the organization’s writer and editor members announced they would refuse nomination for PEN America’s official awards, the organization’s annual crown jewel. “Writers with conscience,” several departing members wrote in an official statement, “don’t debate facts. There is truth and there is fiction, and the truth is that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” And PEN America, they continued, “normalizes genocide” by “giving voice to Zionists.” The departing members also demanded immediate termination of the organization’s head, Susan Nossel, a Jewish woman, due to her “long-standing commitment to Zionism.” The upheaval achieved its goal: for the first time in almost three decades, the organization announced cancellation of its main festival due to protests. (my emphasis)
Having made aliyah from the US 40 years ago, I found Leibowitz’s compendium particularly striking. A few takeaways:
1. Mine was a “black-sheep” aliyah; no one in my family or extended family had ever entertained such an idea, and I encountered opposition. Among the arguments I used—solidarity with Israel, Jewish continuity—I also included American antisemitism. Growing up in an almost totally non-Jewish area of upstate New York, I’d encountered a lot of it; and also, subsequently, in universities and workplaces. Still, if someone had told me that 40 years later you would fall seriously afoul of the American publishing industry by visiting Israel and saying nice things about the experience, or by speaking to a Hadassah group, I’d have felt not so much vindicated as…surprised.
2. It’s a great paradox that the Jewish state—which, according to Theodor Herzl and some of the other Zionist theorists, was supposed to be the solution to antisemitism—is now its focal point. Nothing hits the nail on the head as precisely as the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s observation: “In the past Jews were hated for their religion, then for their race. Today they are hated for their nation state.” But, in the Diaspora, there is no comfort to be taken in the fact that Israel is the focal point. It has that function because antisemitism is so strong in the world at large—a world in which synagogues are torched, Jews are assaulted in the streets, and an American Jewish writer (who doesn’t want to give his name) fears being boycotted “simply for being proudly Jewish and appearing on one of those defamatory lists….” Nor does the fact that the Jewish state has not solved antisemitism but, instead, become its central target represent any sort of failure; after the Holocaust, antisemitism—so deeply grounded in the Western and Muslim worlds that even Herzl didn’t grasp it—simply needed another outlet.
3. Is this article a pitch for aliyah? Not exactly. For one thing, an American Jewish author who makes aliyah and writes in English is hardly overcoming the difficulty of getting published in America, but only making it worse. For another, it can be argued that—with large percentages of Generation Z, and so many among the “elites” now endorsing the ludicrous blood libel that Israel is committing genocide—American Jews should not flee this battlefield but stay in it and try to fight the slanders. What is clear, though, in any case is that the saying I used to hear in my American past—“It can’t happen here”—is no longer valid.
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