The Gaza War has become a war on Jewish books and authors

Jewish author Talia Carner thought she’d seen the worst after hundreds of antisemitic trolls review-bombed her new novel a few months back in retaliation for a pro-Israel video she posted on Instagram in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel last Oct. 7. 

But Carner was shocked anew earlier this month after discovering her name on a now-viral “Is your fav author a zionist?” Google doc, which attempted to blacklist authors they believed were either supportive of Israel — or had failed to condemn the nation in the wake of its ongoing war in Gaza.  

The spreadsheet’s level of detail, comprehensiveness and unbridled malice was chilling. 

It included not only source links but color-coding that ranked each author’s level of allegiance, or opposition, to the Jewish state.

The document’s creator, an X user named Amina, called on readers to boycott both “Pro-Israel/Zionist” authors like Carner, as well as writers who’ve yet to take a stand on Israel “until more evidence is out.”  

“What shocked me was the blatant anti-Semitism – and that it’s politically correct, that it’s OK to do something like that,” said Carner, whose book “The Boy With the Star Tattoo” is centered around Jewish themes such as Israel and the Holocaust.  “Emotionally, it really put me in a bad place.” 

Carner is just one of scores of Jewish authors caught in a cancel-culture war that exploded since the Oct. 7 massacre and Israel’s subsequent Gaza incursion.

Anti-Israel disruptors appear relentless in their efforts to menace writers who so much as mention Israel uncritically, from shutting down author events to ratings-bombing Jewish-themed books on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. 

Prominent pro-Palestinian novelists like Hisham Matar and Maaza Mengiste have joined in on this global effort, boycotting organizations like PEN America for not speaking out against the “genocide” in Gaza. 

For many writers, Jews in particular, the experience evokes a modern day Nazi book burning. 

“They are coming for us,” said Jewish comedian and “Stranger Things” star Brett Gelman, for whom four bookstores canceled book signings earlier this year in support of his collection of short stories, “The Terrifying Realm of the Possible,” alleging security concerns over threats made by Pro-Palestinian activists. “What is going on in this country and with these people has nothing to do with the war. It has nothing to do with Palestinian self determination. This has to do with antisemitism, complete antisemitism.”  

I know how Gellman feels.

In 2020, feeling demoralized covering the COVID-19 pandemic for The Post, I took refuge in a fictional world of my own invention. This became my debut novel “Goyhood,” (Central Avenue, in stores May 28), the story of an Orthodox Jew who discovers he’s not, in fact, Jewish and embarks on an epic road trip with his ne’er do well brother through the Deep South to come to grips with his fate. 

Even in the best circumstances, finding a literary agent and a publisher is a tall order. My circumstances weren’t great: I’d plodded onto the literary scene 60 years after the heyday of American Jewish letters, when authors like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow topped the bestseller lists, But in the following decades — to the surprise of no Jew with a historical perspective – the good will ebbed.

Then, very quickly, it died. The rise of social media proved a perfect — and potent — breeding ground for a campaign of pro-Palestinian goodwill that has led straight to our current world order: Where Zionists are now called genocidal Nazis and Hamas terrorists are the good guys.  

It was a coup even we Jews had to admire.

Burying this grim prognosis in the back of my mind, I set about researching literary agents who might be interested in “Goyhood.” This was during the height of the post-George Floyd era and at least half of the agents on their websites made clear their preferences for BIPOC, LGTBQ or other underrepresented authors – or works whose main characters were thus. In other words, the prognosis for a white Jewish guy hawking a Jewish novel about two white guys wasn’t great.

Mind you, this was before Oct. 7. Today, nearly eight months on — things have gotten far, far worse.

“Half of British publishers ‘won’t take books by Jewish authors,’ ” screamed a March headline in the Daily Telegraph because of the Gaza war fallout. There is “no point putting proposals up to commissioning editors as they just are not interested,” an unnamed literary agent depressingly confirmed. 

Esteemed Israel-based book agent Deborah Harris recently noted that she skipped the London Book Fair this past March, “the first time I decided not to go. I sent agents, and those who went did so with fear.” Her team did feel supported in the end, “but our sales are really down.”

I reached out to an American agent to see if the same status quo is true on our side of the pond. He said he doubted that anyone in the industry was specifically weeding out Jews. However, he added, authors pitching manuscripts bearing the I-word (Israel) should brace for a lot of rejections – doubly so for children’s authors. 

 “Maybe you’ll have luck with a Jewish children’s imprint, but anything beyond that is a no-fly zone,” he cautioned. 

On the flip side, major publishers are actively seeking kid lit about Palestine — and influential bookstores like Skylight Books in Los Angeles are giving them prime shelf space. 

In 2022, Penguin Random House released, to great fanfare, “They Called Me a Lioness,” a YA autobiography of young Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi – who, in the first few pages, accused the Jewish state of “colonial theft” and “ethnic cleansing” of Arab land. 

A month after Oct. 7, Israeli forces arrested Tamimi — lauded by Al Jazeera as a Palestinian Rosa Parks — over an Instagram post threatening to “slaughter” Israeli settlers. “We will drink your blood and eat your skulls,” the post read (her mother later told reporters Tamimi’s account was hacked). 

Marjorie Gann, who reviews anti-Israel kid lit for the media watchdog group CAMERA, has been working to keep books like “They Called Me a Lioness” out of school curricula — with minimal success. 

“Those who are writing these books want to prejudice children and they want to give them an anti-Israel predisposition,” she said. “And since the readers are young and impressionable, that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, so when they think, ‘Israel,’ they will think, ‘the bad guys.’”

Meanwhile, even the bestselling Jewish or pro-Israel writers are having to pay the price of achieving visibility — often after decades of hard work.

Among the some 200 names on the now-notorious “Zionist author” spreadsheet is Lisa Barr, who suffered the same fate as Talia Carner for her pro-Israel Instagram posts after Oct. 7: her bestselling novel “Woman on Fire” got slammed with hundreds of one-star ratings on Goodreads overnight. 

“You work your heart out on something and then you have people who are able to go in freely and tank your book for no reason related to the book itself but because you’re Jewish,” Barr said. 

Calling her experience “a nightmare, an awakening and a calling,” Barr, along with 31 other Jewish women authors, founded Artists Against Antisemitism, a support group for harassed writers which also raises money to fight antisemitism on campuses. 

Another founding member, author and publishing guru Zibby Owens, pulled her company’s sponsorship for the National Book Awards last November after organizers refused to nix nominees’ plans to promote an anti-Israel agenda during their acceptance speeches. Two months later, Owens — founder of publishing house Zibby Media — got her first one-star rating on Goodreads for her new novel, “Blank.” The critic reviewed it in just two words: 

“Zionist racist.” 

For historians like Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, experiences like Owens’ and Barrs’ portends an even more sinister future to come. “Silencing an author because he is Jewish or pro-Israel is all too reminiscent of a dark and not too distant era,” he says. “We haven’t yet reached the point of burning books written by Jews, but . . . we could be heading in a very dangerous direction.”

In the end, I was lucky enough to land a literary agent who loved my manuscript. He sold it to an indie publishing house that loved it too. Evidently, a well-told story still carries weight in a politically fraught industry.

But now, in a post-Oct. 7 world, I’m weathering a second wave of agita. Will a rabid TikToker sic her one-star goons on me for writing this piece?

Will agitators from Writers Against the War in Gaza shout me down like they did Mayim Bialik at a PEN event she hosted in January?  Will I need security at my events? 

Will I be the next “Pro-Israel/Zionist” to be red-banded on the spreadsheet? 

Luckily, I have superstar role models like Talia Carner, Brett Gelman and the women behind Artists Against Antisemitism who know how to shake it off and fight another day. 

“If you let bullies bully, they’ll continue to bully,” Gelman said. “I think there’s times to ignore a bully and I think there’s times to face off against a bully. And I think we’ve reached a point now where we have to face off, and that’s why I continue to speak out.”