A ‘Silent Moratorium’ Against Jews Emerges in the Literary World

PEN America’s new dispatch outlining the growing exclusion of Jewish and Israeli writers from the literary sphere offers evidence that antisemitism flourishes in the world of letters. A “silent moratorium” is how the report’s authors describe the climate since October 7, 2023. Rage against Israel forced PEN to cancel its annual awards and literary festival in 2024. A previous leader of PEN, Suzanne Nossel, was accused of a “commitment to Zionism.”PEN has gathered harrowing testimony. One author, Lisa Barr, reports that she “received up to 50 hostile messages a day, including ‘Die Jew’ and threats that her daughter should be raped.” A Jerusalem-based literary agent, Deborah Harris, typically sells between five and ten novels a year in America. Since October 7 she has not sold one. She tells PEN that “no one will even look” at Israeli authors. A “widening cultural isolation” is the phrase PEN uses to describe what it is hearing from Jews and Israelis. PEN, though, duly repeats the “genocide” canard. Undeniable, though, is what PEN calls the “blatant hostility, discrimination, and hate” faced by Jewish writers, not to mention Israeli ones. One author reckons that these writers “have essentially been hounded out of literary life.” The Jewish Book Council has opened an antisemitism hotline.A creative writing student at Bar-Ilan University, Ronit Eitan, describes herself as a vociferous critic of Prime Minister Netanyahu. However, she relates that when she has tried to share her work “what I found out is it doesn’t matter how I define myself. It’s not up to me. I’m a Jew first for everyone else.” One journalist gave up trying to reach an American publication because “It’s not worth being punched in the face. I left the conversation.”In 2024 the literary magazine Guernica retracted an essay by Israeli writer Joanna Chen. It called the piece “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness.” Also in 2024 more than 7,000 authors — including luminaries like Leslie Jamison, Sally Rooney, and Jhumpa Lahiri — signed a pledge not to work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies, and publications. The pledge cited the “overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.” That same year saw the publication of a spreadsheet entitled “Is your fav author a zionist???” PEN explains that writers were “included on the list for a host of reasons,” among them “posting ‘both sides’ statements, objecting to boycotts, visiting Israel, or writing about an Israeli fictional character.” A former Sun reporter, James Kirchick, cited the spreadsheet and attendant developments to note that antisemitism is “becoming the avant-garde.”Ms. Harris tells PEN she has shifted to non-fiction books on themes, like “bats, the brain, and the alphabet.” She laments that even with these measures “I have had nonfiction books where the team of publicists and marketing had to keep being replaced because people would not work on those books, because they were written by an Israeli writer.” Other writers report that editors are checking to make sure they use the word “genocide.”On Thursday, the same day that PEN released its report the organization’s president — the novelist Dinaw Mengestu — resigned. Mr. Megestu says in a statement that “That decision is obviously not something I came to lightly, having remained on the board through numerous challenges.” He was silent in respect of the antisemitism that PEN’s own report puts into sharp — and eloquent — relief.

A ‘Silent Moratorium’ Against Jews Emerges in the Literary World

A ‘Silent Moratorium’ Against Jews Emerges in the Literary World

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