Eight years ago, I published a novel about a Montreal Jewish family with a dangerous mystical obsession. It had absolutely nothing to do with Israel. But that didn’t stop a former Israeli combat soldier from trying to get me disinvited from a book event.
He emailed the venue, arguing that it should not promote an author who had written critically about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as I had during my time as an Israel-Palestine reporter. “This,” he wrote, “is a disgrace.”
Luckily, the venue held firm and I got to do the event. But that experience — absolutely trivial compared to the censorship Palestinians have long experienced — planted a worry in my mind: If I, a Jew and citizen of Israel, am not allowed to question the Israeli government’s narrative, then who is?
The answer, increasingly, is nobody.
Not the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who was supposed to speak at Manhattan cultural hub 92NY but saw his event abruptly pulled after he signed an open letter condemning Israel’s war in Gaza.
Not the editor-in-chief of science journal eLife, Michael Eisen, who was fired after reposting an Onion article about Gaza with the headline “Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas.”
Not the Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave, who tweeted that “war crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies,” referring to Israel’s war in Gaza, and then had to resign from leading Europe’s biggest tech conference.
Not the Boston Workers Circle, a Jewish cultural center that got ousted from the Boston Jewish community’s umbrella group after cosponsoring a rally calling for a ceasefire.
Not the Israeli professors, journalists, and lawmakers who have been suspended, fired, or even arrested for criticizing the war in Gaza.
And not even the Israeli hostages who were recently released from Hamas captivity. When 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz stated that she was “given access to medical care” and…
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