A protester films herself as she interrupts the Scotiabank Giller Prize in Toronto, on Nov. 13. The ceremony was twice interrupted by anti-Israel protests.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
For Kelly Baron, now ex-publisher of the Canadian literary journal Ex-Puritan, the final straw was a statement reposted by a colleague on Instagram. It accused Israelis of stealing Palestinian bodies for their skin due to allegedly high rates of skin cancer for Israelis – the suggestion being that Jews are not indigenous to the region.
Even before the skin-stealing post, Ms. Baron felt, after the Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza by Israel, that some social media activity by CanLit colleagues went beyond support for Palestinians and strayed into antisemitic territory.
“There was no outcry on Oct 7. I signed onto social media and saw that my peers and colleagues were either celebrating it or rationalizing it as an act of resistance,” says Ms. Baron, who is Jewish. She says she originally gave the Toronto-based magazine six months’ working notice but resigned effective immediately on Monday.
The skin-cancer allegation was a post too far. It cited a Gaza spokesperson who said “ ‘Israel’ [in quotation marks] steals our Martyrs’ bodies.” And in a second post: “they occupy us, steal our dead bodies, & wear our skin.”
It was reposted by a colleague at the journal on his personal account, who in another post, referred to “so-called Israel.” He also shared a statement from another account claiming “Israel admits burning hundreds of people on 7 October.”
“This is so far removed from Palestinian liberation. I don’t know how anyone can think this is effective for any kind of social movement,” says Ms. Baron, who shared screenshots with me.
Neither the colleague nor ex-Puritan editor-in-chief Sanchari Sur responded to e-mails from The Globe by deadline.
(A similar claim was recently made by model Gigi Hadid; advocates for Israel have slammed these allegations as repeating the ancient blood libel against Jews.)
Skin-stealing aside, Ms. Baron’s former colleague is certainly not alone in CanLit circles in describing Israel as a so-called nation.
An open letter following the disruption of the Scotiabank Giller Prize ceremony calls for charges to be dropped against the protesters, and for Israel to end the “75-year occupation” of Palestine, which questions the legitimacy of Israel’s existence. It asks for the release of “all hostages” – equating the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas with Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
The letter shares deep concerns about the catastrophic suffering of Palestinian civilians at the hands of Israel. But it only mentions the Oct. 7 attacks in relation to the Canadian condemnation they attracted, without condemning them directly. And it makes no mention of the horrific sexual assaults of Israeli women by the Hamas attackers.
At the very least, this feels like a troubling oversight.
I don’t know who specifically wrote it; when I asked the first signatory, Canadian author Farzana Doctor, she said she was one of many who collaborated on it. “We worked as a collective,” she told me by e-mail.
Another open letter has been written in response by Canadian authors Sidura Ludwig and Anna Rosner. It says the first Giller letter was disturbing and distressing in that it shared alienating biases and contained glaring omissions. Hamas was not mentioned at all, it points out, and says citing a “75-year occupation” without acknowledging over 3,000 years of Jewish presence in the land “erases the Jewish narrative from the current conflict.”
The letter states that “incomplete narratives spark the growing hatred against Jews and result in further Jewish isolation during a time when communities seeking peace must come together.”
Each letter has more than 2,000 signatures.
There are so many open letters going around that it can be hard to keep track, but the one that led to the dismissal of the head of the University of Alberta’s Sexual Assault Centre was particularly egregious in that it called the sexual assaults of Israeli women an “unverified accusation.” This letter, since taken down, was signed by academics as well as politicians Sarah Jama, an Ontario MPP, and Susan Kim, a Victoria city councillor.
After much outcry, Ms. Kim removed her signature. But when Victoria’s mayor was asked by reporters whether she believed people were raped during the Hamas attack, Marianne Alto said, “I don’t have enough information to be able to answer that in an informed way.”
The silence from people who have espoused the #BelieveWomen mantra is loud and hurtful. There’s a meme going around: “MeToo unless you’re a Jew.”
Open letters may be performative, but they are also of value. People who are justifiably angry and anguished feel compelled to do something, say something. Writers and other artists especially feel the need to voice their views. But if a letter dismisses the value of human lives on either side – or calls into question (or ignores) sexual assault, please think about what you’re signing. Or posting.
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