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Related: About this forumA Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing
A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing
This month, an account on X with the handle @moyurireads and 360 followers published a link to a color-coded spreadsheet classifying nearly 200 writers according to their views on the genocide in Gaza. Titled Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?, it reads like a cross between Tiger Beat and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The novelist Emily St. John Mandel, the author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, earned a red pro-Israel/Zionist classification because, according to the lists creator, she travels to Israel frequently talks favorably about it. Simply for posting a link to the Israeli chapter of the Red Cross, the novelist Kristin Hannah was deemed a Zionist, as was the author Gabrielle Zevin for delivering a book talk to Hadassah, a Jewish womens organization. Needless to say, the creator of the list whose post on X announcing it garnered over a million views within a few days encourages readers to boycott any works produced by Zionists.
The spreadsheet is but the crudest example of the virulently anti-Israel and increasingly antisemitic sentiment that has been coursing through the literary world since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. Much of it revolves around the charge of genocide and seeks to punish Zionists and anyone else who refuses to explicitly denounce the Jewish state for allegedly committing said crime.
snip===========================
Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression is particularly alarming.
This month, an account on X with the handle @moyurireads and 360 followers published a link to a color-coded spreadsheet classifying nearly 200 writers according to their views on the genocide in Gaza. Titled Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?, it reads like a cross between Tiger Beat and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The novelist Emily St. John Mandel, the author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, earned a red pro-Israel/Zionist classification because, according to the lists creator, she travels to Israel frequently talks favorably about it. Simply for posting a link to the Israeli chapter of the Red Cross, the novelist Kristin Hannah was deemed a Zionist, as was the author Gabrielle Zevin for delivering a book talk to Hadassah, a Jewish womens organization. Needless to say, the creator of the list whose post on X announcing it garnered over a million views within a few days encourages readers to boycott any works produced by Zionists.
The spreadsheet is but the crudest example of the virulently anti-Israel and increasingly antisemitic sentiment that has been coursing through the literary world since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. Much of it revolves around the charge of genocide and seeks to punish Zionists and anyone else who refuses to explicitly denounce the Jewish state for allegedly committing said crime.
snip===========================
Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression is particularly alarming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/27/opinion/publishing-literary-antisemitism.html
No paywall:
https://archive.ph/wrqUK#selection-3227.0-3259.528
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A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing (Original Post)
lapucelle
May 2024
OP
Yes - boycotting an author because they said good things about Israel is just McCarthyism
DBoon
May 2024
#2
Eko
(8,088 posts)1. That is efffed up.
While I may not agree with what Israel is doing in Gaza I would never boycott anything just because it is Jewish. Now if the author said something like "Death to all Palestinians!" then sure, don't read their book if you don't want to but otherwise it is just racism.
DBoon
(22,833 posts)2. Yes - boycotting an author because they said good things about Israel is just McCarthyism
Like banishing someone for Communist influences for saying something nice about spring in Moscow
Richard D
(9,124 posts)3. But it's not antisemitism...
... It's anti Zionism.
ShazamIam
(2,640 posts)4. The attack on Israel and Israel's response has/is being used to whip up antisemitism and it gets worse each day.
More division by the global leaders of fascism. Division is an ancient tool for dominance.
lapucelle
(19,494 posts)5. And the anti-Semitism is becoming increasingly normalized.