This month, the account X, with the handle @moyurireads and 360 followers, published a link to a color-coded spreadsheet categorizing about 200 authors according to their views on the “genocide” in Gaza. Titled “Is Your Favorite Author Zionist?”, the spreadsheet is a cross between Tiger Beat and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Novelist Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven and The Sea of Tranquility, was placed in the red “pro-Israel/Zionist” category because, according to the list's creators, she “frequently visits Israel and speaks favorably about it.” Just post the link The Israeli Red Cross considers novelist Kristin Hannah a “Zionist,” as does author Gabrielle Zevin, who gave a book talk at the Jewish women's organization Hadassah. Needless to say, the creator of the list, whose post announcing the list on X was viewed more than a million times within days, has called on readers to boycott all works produced by “Zionists.”
The spreadsheet is just the most blatant example of the virulent anti-Israel, and increasingly anti-Semitic, sentiment that has swirled in the literary world since the October 7 massacre by Hamas. Much of it revolves around charges of genocide and seeks to punish Zionists and others who refuse to unequivocally condemn the Jewish state for allegedly committing such crimes. Because the vast majority of American Jews (80 percent of whom say that caring for Israel is an important or essential part of their Judaism, according to a 2020 poll) are Zionists, to accuse all Zionists of complicity in genocide is to annihilate a core part of Jewish identity.
Over the past few months, a touchstone has emerged across broad swaths of the literary world that effectively excludes full Jewish participation unless one condemns Israel. This phenomenon has been playing out in progressive circles (academia, politics, cultural institutions) for some time. What is particularly disturbing is that it has now reached the lofty and sophisticated world of publishing, a place to which Jewish Americans have made significant contributions and whose vitality depends on intellectual diversity and freedom of expression.
As always and everywhere, this rise in anti-Semitism has gone hand in hand with a rise in illiberalism. Writers rarely express unanimous opinions on controversial political issues. We are a naturally contentious bunch, answerable, at least in theory, only to our own consciences.
Forcing writers to express support or opposition to a cause, no matter how popular that message may be, is one of the cruellest things a writer can do to a society whose role it is to tell society what they believe in. List-making in particular is a tactic with a long and ignoble history used by enemies of literature and freedom on both the left and the right. But the problem runs much deeper than a noob blacklist targeting “Zionists.”
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One of the great mass delusions of the 21st century is the belief that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. This grotesque moral inversion began to take shape even before Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza. A genocidal terrorist organization that perpetrated the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and instigated war with Israel is exonerated, while the victims of Hamas attacks are accused of committing the worst crimes in human history.
A generous portrayal of those who ascribe genocidal motives to Israel is that they are ignorant and essentially believe the term means “large number of civilian casualties.” (It is worth noting here that the UN, while hardly noticed, has significantly lowered its estimates of the number of women and children killed in Gaza.) For others, accusing Israel of genocide is an emotional outlet to express anger at such horrific loss of life. A third, more pessimistic characterization of the ubiquitous genocide hoax is that it is merely the latest iteration of the ancient anti-Semitic blood libel, which claimed that Jews murdered non-Jewish children to use their blood in religious rituals.
It is not uncommon for college students and professional activists to use heated and imprecise language to convey their strong beliefs. Much of the unscrupulous rhetoric directed at Israel and its Zionist supporters stems from the hyperbole that increasingly characterizes our political discourse. What should worry us more is when people who have dedicated their lives to the written word manipulate language for political purposes, such as stigmatizing the Jewish people.
Nine days after the October 7 attacks, the popular website Literary Hub began publishing near-daily denunciations of agitational propaganda that described Israel as a “rogue nation-state” and routinely accused it of committing genocide. In March, after mass resignations from its staff, the literary magazine Guernica retracted a personal essay by a left-wing Israeli woman who described her experience volunteering to transport Palestinian children to Israel for medical treatment. In her resignation letter, one of the magazine's co-publishers denounced the piece as a “pathetic apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”
Naomi Firestone Teeter, chief executive of the Jewish Book Council, said anti-Semitism in the literary world used to lurk in the shadows, but has become more overt since October 7. “The fact that people are proud of it and talking about it openly is a whole other story,” she said.One of the most disturbing developments in this regard is how in the United States the word “Zionist” is now frequently uttered with contempt.
Until relatively recently, the use of the word “Zionist” as an insult was limited to Soviet and Arab propagandists, who spent decades trying to make it the moral equivalent of “Nazi.” Today, many progressives use the word interchangeably, making no distinction between Zionists who support a two-state solution (as most Jews in the overwhelmingly liberal literary world probably think) and those who believe in a “Greater Israel” that would encompass the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. Anyone can be a Zionist, but what I've found in 20 years of covering anti-Semitism is that most Jews, when someone yells “Zionist” at them, basically hear “Jew.”
The misuse of the words “genocide” and “Zionist” is at the root of a dispute that threatens to tear apart PEN America, a prominent writers' organization. Like many literary disputes, it is accompanied by a series of open letters. In February, a letter with almost 1,500 signatures was published, demanding that PEN “wake up from its silent, lukewarm, neutral, complacent middle ground and actually stand up against actual genocide.” Until then, PEN had issued dozens of statements to draw attention to the plight of Gaza's writers (the letter claimed, without citing evidence, that Israel had “targeted” them for assassination), but this was not enough. “We demand that PEN America issue an official statement about the writers killed in Gaza and name the murderers: Israel, a Zionist colonial state funded by the US government,” the letter read.
On March 20, PEN responded to the ultimatum by supporting the ceasefire call, but critics were not satisfied.
Last month, ahead of PEN's annual literary awards ceremony, nearly half of the nominated writers withdrew from the competition. Some of these writers then published another open letter, declaring, “There is no difference of opinion among writers of conscience. There is fact and fiction. It is true that Israel leads the genocide of Palestinians.” They accused PEN of “normalizing genocide,” of “platform[ing]Zionists,” and, most shamefully, called for the resignation of its Jewish chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, citing her “longstanding commitment to Zionism.”
Salman Rushdie, along with eight former PEN presidents, signed a letter defending the organization, but his intervention earned him a “mistakable” rating on the anti-Zionist blacklist. (He has been treated far worse by Islamic zealots and their Western apologists.) PEN ultimately canceled both the awards ceremony and the subsequent World Voices Festival.
Complaints about PEN's lack of outrage over the death of a Palestinian writer are a sham: where have those who now criticize PEN made the effort to protest the complete lack of freedom of expression that characterized the Gaza Strip under Hamas rule for 17 years?
The true purpose of this cynical weaponization of the word “genocide” and authoritarian assertion that anyone who opposes it is an accomplice is to silence debate, defame opponents, and impose a rigid orthodoxy on the entire publishing industry. It is a blatant attempt to impose an ideological litmus test on all who wish to join the republic of letters — a litmus test that the vast majority of Jews will fail.
An intimidation campaign, similar to that faced by the closed-off, dissident writers that PEN regularly champions, is being waged to force writers to toe the new party line. PEN's current president, Jenny Finney Boylan, recently said she had heard from “many, many writers who don't agree with those withdrawing from PEN events, and who don't want to withdraw from our events themselves, but who are afraid of what will happen if they speak out.”
Compelling discourse is ultimately what PEN's critics want from the organization: it is the tactics of the commissars, not the tactics of writers in a free society. Censorship, thought policing, and bullying are antithetical to the spirit of literature understood as an intimate dialogue between the writer and the individual reader.
PEN's detractors are not helping the Palestinian people by covering up for Hamas; they are seeking to hostilely hijack a noble organization dedicated to defending freedom of expression in order to advance their sectarian and bigoted political aims.
Highly successful authors like Neil Gaiman, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Mr. Mandel don't have to worry about their careers being damaged by accusations of Zionism. But the blacklists and boycotts aren't aimed at them. The movement's real targets are lesser-known writers, budding novelists, aspiring poets and creative writing students, many of them Jewish but not only. They feel the change in the air.
“As a Jewish author, I definitely worry that just because I have ‘National Jewish Book Award winner’ on my resume, it might change how readers perceive my work, especially after I’ve spent two years writing a novel that has nothing to do with Jewishness,” said a Jewish creative writing professor and novelist, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity.
For Jewish authors on Jewish themes, being criticized is no longer the worst fate; even publishing such a book is becoming increasingly difficult. “It's clear that it takes real courage to acquire and publish a book that is proud of its Jewish voice and about Jewishness,” a prominent literary agent told me. “To be labeled a genocider, a moral outrage against humanity, because you believe in Israel's right to exist is now considered worthy of being suspended.”
It is a sickening irony that the literary establishment that put up barricades against the “banning” of books is now moving to boycott authors on the grounds of their ethno-religious identity. For a growing number of writers, professing the belief that the world's only Jewish state is genocidal and that its dismantling is necessary for the progress of humanity is a fashionable political statement, a cheap decoration to flaunt in order to show they are on the right team. Anti-Semitism is becoming as avant-garde as Stalinism was for an earlier generation of left-wing literary intellectuals.
James Kirchick is a contributing writer for Tablet magazine, a writer for Air Mail magazine, and the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.
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