PEN: The New Wound
For many of us, Oct. 7th 2023 was hurtful not just because of the attack, but even more so because of the casual justifications that followed. Friends and colleagues insisting that slaughtering more than a thousand people in their homes was not a crime, just some sort of perfectly reasonable resistance. The open approval and even admiration for Hamas, making plain that their massacre and hostage taking was perfectly fine. The attack was physical violence. The justifications that followed were violence against our humanity and our collective soul.
I feel something similar happening with the current exclusion of Jewish and Israeli writers, and now PEN, which is supposed to be a free-speech watchdog, coming to document that discrimination while explicitly stating that they see no reason to take any action against it. PEN’s president resigning because the rights of antizionists to boycott are more important than the freedom of expression of the writers it’s his job to protect. That some people hate us we already know. But for supposed free-speech defenders to acknowledge discrimination against Jews while making pointedly clear there will be no call for it to end is once more an affront to our humanity.
In all other cases, PEN routinely calls out even the slightest hint of cultural appropriation or racial discrimination. But here, when publishers say they won’t take a book if a character named Yael isn’t changed to Sue, PEN sees no need for action. PEN routinely opposes requiring artists to make political declarations as a condition of appearing publicly, yet does not take a stand against Jewish and Israeli writers being required to sign statements condemning Israel as a condition of participation.
This is an affront to our identity, our culture, and our worth as human beings. That is why this current controversy hurts so much—not simply because some people hate us, but because we’re finding out that even institutions which claim to defend universal principles are willing to make an exception when the targets are Jews.
