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Literary Awards Erased by Pro-Palestinian Authors’ Boycott

The leftist “free expression” group PEN America collided with a brick wall of radicals who don’t like anybody who expresses a sympathetic view of Israel after the Hamas slaughter of Oct. 7. Its literary awards ceremony needed to be canceled as a consequence of a considerable withdrawal of authors hanging a “pro-Palestinian” pose.

If you disagree with that view? You’re “complicit” in genocide. Agree with the mob, otherwise you favor mass homicide. Their view is so clearly appropriate that they can’t perceive how anybody may presumably disagree with it.

“We refuse to gild the reputation of an organization that runs interference for an administration aiding and abetting genocide with our tax dollars,” a gaggle of nominees wrote in an April 17 letter addressed to PEN America leaders. “And we refuse to take part in anything that will serve to overshadow PEN’s complicity in normalizing genocide.”

Of 61 authors and translators nominated for a e book prize this yr, 28 declined. For probably the most prestigious e book prize—the PEN/Jean Stein award, which comes with a $75,000 prize—9 of 10 finalists dropped out.

The fiasco will proceed. PEN America’s annual World Voices Festival has additionally been hemorrhaging individuals.

Activists need heads to roll at PEN America: “The fact is that Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people. PEN’s perpetuation of false equivalences, their equivocation and normalizing, is indeed a betrayal.”

PEN America replied: “The current war in Gaza is horrific. But we cannot agree that the answer to its wrenching dilemmas and consequences lies in a shutting down of conversation and the closing down of viewpoints.”

This furor underlines what conservatives have been saying about PEN’s self-righteous “book ban” posture. They’re not “anti-censorship.” They’re selling a leftist revolution in literature and libraries. What the Left desires is a system the place the “experts”—educators and librarians—choose all of the books, and the “nonexperts”—mother and father—shut up and settle for them.

So, it’s wonderful to see the Left consuming its personal over who can place themselves with ethical authority as probably the most “pro-Palestinian.” Free expression is nowhere to be discovered.

The Washington Post reported that lots of the withdrawing activists objected to a January occasion the place writer Randa Jarrar was bodily eliminated after she screamed incessantly throughout a PEN-sponsored dialogue of American comic Moshe Kasher’s memoir “Subculture Vulture,” which featured Israel-supporting actress and former “Jeopardy!” host Mayim Bialik.

Protesters had been the censors: “Jarrar and other protesters from the group Writers Against the War on Gaza were shouting, through a loudspeaker, the names of Palestinian writers killed in Gaza.” The group tweeted video, complaining, “With delusional liberal aplomb, PEN America claims objectivity while platforming genocidal Zionists and silencing Palestinians.”

As typical with the radicals, “objectivity” or “bothsidesism” is painted as evil, and anybody talking in support of Israel is robotically a maniacal Zionist who should be deplatformed.

The Post story ended with a quote from novelist (and former Andrew Cuomo speechwriter) Camonghne Felix: “We cannot hope to change every institution, but we hope that by changing ourselves what we will accept, that the organizations will have no choice but to bend towards us.”

The notion of free expression goes to crumble when the leftist “negotiating” place is “no choice but to bend.”

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