“Lastly, disciplinary motion shall be taken in opposition to anybody who violates this coverage as much as and together with termination.”
This was the second line of a response despatched by senior management to me and all my coworkers at PEN America in an e mail thread on June 26, 2024. I began the thread by posting a hyperlink to an article titled “What Unlearning Zionism Can Teach American Jews about Israel and Palestine” to my group’s listserv channel for disseminating attention-grabbing articles which can be related to our work as a free expression and literature group.
I imagined that my org’s response to Oren Kroll-Zeldin’s article may spur on fierce discourse amongst employees. Within the article, Kroll-Zeldin paperwork his journey in gaining new views on Israel/Palestine and branching out from Zionist ideologies. Discourse–even when contentious– that PEN America wanted, as controversy continued to embroil the group following Hamas’ October 7 assault. These controversies included outcry about not offering historic context for Israel’s ongoing genocide, to using force to throw out a protester at an event, to failing to make space for pro-Palestinian writers at events.
However my publish led to no discourse, only a risk.
To me, the risk was foolish, not in its vacancy, however moderately in its context: that these phrases can come from a company that prides itself on safeguarding free speech. PEN America swiftly walked again its risk in a follow-up e mail, regretting that the risk got here throughout as chilling. Inside that e mail was a paragraph that famous that the primary e mail was prompted by Jewish and non-Jewish employees that felt the article attacked the best way they outlined their spiritual exercise, although the phrase “antisemitic” was by no means used.
I didn’t instantly course of the implication of those complaints. My rapid thought was that my group wanted to carve out areas for MENA voices to shepherd conversations like this and to specific themselves as they witnessed a genocide unfold in Gaza. And but a query lingered: why can’t we have now these conversations?
I shortly realized that I used to be not alone and that PEN America was not alone as a liberal group that leverages its energy to suppresses pro-Palestinian voices.
In July of 2024, I interviewed the Lebanese-American poet Yahia Lababidi about his newest assortment, Palestinian Wail. I realized in my interview with Lababidi that his preliminary writer dropped his e-book over the usage of phrases like genocide and homicide, claiming these phrases “prejudged a authorized matter” and will create a scandal for the writer. Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Rabea Eghbariah skilled comparable censorship from their publishers (The Guardian and Harvard Review respectively): singular phrases– “genocide,” “holocaust,” “Nakba,” or “intifada”—derailing the publishing of their writing.
I started monitoring extra situations of pro-Palestinian censorship after my interview with Lababidi. I knew that pro-Palestinian suppression was not restricted to publishing. In December of 2023, a Roosevelt Island couple protested the inclusion of pro-Palestinian youngsters’s books in an indigenous folks show for “Learn Palestine Week” at their native New York Public Library. The couple checked out 5 books (Linda Sarsour’s We’re in This Together, Aya Ghanameh’s These Olive Trees, Reem Kassis and Noha Eilouti’s We Are Palestinian, Hannah Moushabeck and Reem Madooh’s Homeland, and Anne Laurel Carter and Akin Duzakin’s What the Kite Noticed) with the intention of holding on to the books indefinitely to forestall them from being checked out. “I believe there’s a distinction in speaking about Palestine as a nation, and the Palestinians as a folks,” writer Aya Ghanameh informed me after I requested why this censorship occurred, “and after we try this by way of mainstream shops (like These Olive Bushes with Penguin Random Home) it straight contests dominant Israeli narratives that the Nakba by no means occurred, and the Palestinian folks didn’t and don’t exist. That’s what’s scary to them.”
Shortly after this incident, NYPL workers received an email from the Administrators of Department Managers with new tips on shows, with NYPL staff feeling that these new tips chilled dialogue on Israel-Palestine–each internally and externally. Because of this, the NYPL did not incorporate pro-Palestinian censorship for its Banned Books Week 2024 programming, lacking out on a possibility to normalize having censored pro-Palestinians along with banned e-book authors and exploring their intersection.
In December, my union chair knowledgeable me that my group can be investigating me for a harassment grievance. She didn’t inform me the character of the grievance, solely that there was one. The next day, I talked to HR in regards to the grievance. I acquired no additional clarification of the grievance, simply that the investigative lead would e mail me to schedule a gathering over Zoom. Anxiousness acquired the very best of me, and I shortly scheduled one thing for the next week. Over Zoom in my condo, I launched myself to the investigator, attempting to hide my anxiousness. When the investigator revealed that the grievance stemmed from an article posted on PEN’s listserv, I eased up.
Ah, that is bullshit, I believed.
For an hour, I answered questions on whether or not I had thought of how the article may offend “a supporter of Israel, ” whether or not my relationships with colleagues had modified, and in regards to the “tensions” at PEN America post-October 7. I identified the obtrusive energy imbalance: a lot of the stress at PEN America got here from senior employees not heeding the recommendation of junior employees on the difficulty of Gaza.
I informed the investigator that I didn’t publish Kroll-Zeldin’s article to single out any employees member. “I discovered the article attention-grabbing in relation to the present cultural local weather,” I stated when requested why I posted the article. That was true: the article supplied perception into the foibles of my group with out utilizing its identify. I can say now that I did goal my group, although. I wished my group to decouple itself from liberal Zionism. What was clear now with this investigation was how pervasive liberal Zionism was at PEN America.
We completed the interview in two days. A lot to the chagrin of my union rep, it was unclear if I might be disciplined following the interview.
I continued cataloging Palestinian censorship. Spite partially fueled me now. I used to be particularly excited to interview Jasbir Puar, the writer of The Proper to Maim, which appears to be like at how Israel makes use of maiming–debilitation–to manage the Palestinian inhabitants. In fall of 2023, pro-Israeli advocates—Stand with Us, Jewish Management Mission, and Amichai Chikli—weaponized the phrase “blood libel” in opposition to Puar. Professional-Israel teams latched onto false claims that Puar wrote about Israel participating in organ mining even though the e-book doesn’t broach the topic, main liberal colleagues and her employers to distance themselves from Puar. The “actual mechanism of repression,” Puar informed me are “these sort of quiet moments the place liberal colleagues who don’t need to, you recognize, mess up their very own careers or come out on the aspect of Palestine or change into affiliated with me as a result of I’m seen as poisonous or pariah.”
Current examples present how intensive this mechanism of repression is. In 2023, Bard School confronted pressure from the ADL and the Israeli consulate to cancel a course titled Apartheid in Israel/Palestine with author and reporter Nathan Thrall. In February, New York Governor Kathy Hochul dissolved two Palestinian Studies positions at Hunter School. In March, President Donald Trump made a public decree that funding must stop for universities that enable “unlawful protests.” Columbia capitulated to Trump’s decree, expelling, suspending, and revoking the levels of twenty-two college students who participated in protests—this within the wake of ICE’s detaining of Mahmoud Khalil.
It’s only a documentary. I repeated this in my head as I stared at my cellphone, my YouTube app opened to Benny Brunner’s The Nice Ebook Theft, an exhilarating documentary that appears at Israel’s theft of 70,000 Palestinian books and the makes an attempt to set them free. It was extraordinarily related to PEN America’s mission—it was PEN America’s mission. And but, I hesitated to publish it to our listserv. I embodied what British-Palestinian writer Selma Dabbagh called self-censorship. She described this as a author’s consciousness about what is feasible to be revealed. For Palestinian writers, that is amplified as simply stating their id might offend.
The investigation went into February and encompassed extra folks. I knew there was a excessive chance that I’d be reported once more if I posted The Nice Ebook Theft—that I must clarify to my household once more that I used to be being investigated for harassment. After finding out circumstances of pro-Palestinian censorship, I knew now that when somebody expresses concern over Zionist ideologies or reductive views in the direction of Palestinians there may be, concomitantly, a voice that decries these considerations as antisemitic. However I additionally knew if my group was going to advocate for pro-Palestinian writers and successfully lend its voice and its assets to mitigate the present Trump regime, it couldn’t borrow those self same techniques to silence one in every of its personal.
I despatched the hyperlink.
Six days later, the investigator emailed me to arrange one other interview. I used to be to be investigated—once more—for making a hostile work surroundings. This time it was for a documentary. Once more, I had my union rep for the assembly. The investigator’s tone was rather less formal—I used to be a repeat offender on the principal’s workplace.
I have no idea what our investigator will discover when he concludes everything of the investigation. My investigation has been resolved, and I cannot be going through disciplinary actions, however the investigator informed me that he can be taking a holistic method to the investigation, making suggestions for the complete group, which hopefully makes observe of the exodus of Muslim workers prior to now 12 months. Regardless, what is obvious is how liberal organizations have to decouple themselves from Liberal Zionism, and the organizations that defend it, in order that secure areas exist-not simply to guard Israel/Palestine discourse, and free speech.
My investigation was not a glitch—it’s a systematic function. The system must be overhauled, particularly in liberal organizations, lest these organizations that declare to be defenders of free speech discover themselves complicit in Trump’s objective of writers and free thinkers in danger, particularly within the wake of Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire.
