Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation

In this bracing account, novelist Kern (The Free People’s Village) unpacks what they’ve learned as a prominent online anti-Zionist activist. Kern, who is Jewish, begins by considering how “Israel claims I have some special connection to Palestinian lands. I could move there... and claim... rights that are denied to Indigenous Palestinians.” How is it, they wonder, that Americans with no connection to Palestine can be afforded such opportunities, yet Americans respond to “billions of our taxpayer dollars” going to Israel’s bombing campaign against Palestine with a collective “what does it have to do with me?” Kern finds one answer in the prevalence on social media of “Hasbara,” the “Israeli term for propaganda,” aimed primarily at Americans and spread by “bots, committed Zionists, or even salaried [Israeli government] employees.” Hasbara, Kern writes, works to “confuse” the “basic” historical facts about Israel and silence dissent (one tactic is to draw on pseudo–social justice rhetoric—e.g. calling criticism of Israel “problematic”). Delving into the history of Zionism, Kern argues that it evolved from European colonialism and antisemitism (one Zionist founder, for instance, wrote that “because the Yid is ugly” and “sickly... we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty.... The Yid has accepted submission, and therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command”). It’s a bold challenge to accepted American narratives about Israel. (Mar.)