Censoring Global Jewry

The special exemption to murder, threaten, malign and marginalize Jews, which has permeated all aspects of Western culture, took yet another ominous turn last week, revealing just how engrained and casual Jew-hatred has become—as if we needed any reminders.

Yet, the more it happens, the more inured we become.

Through sheer repetition, calling for the destruction of the Jewish ancestral homeland—a homeland the vast majority of Jews regard as fundamental to their identity—makes Israel seem uniquely evil, without regard to its moral standing. Justifying the murder and rape of Israeli infants and teenage girls as “resistance by any means necessary” reorients the brain to see babies wearing IDF onesies.

When moral bearings are lost, and the banality of antisemitism no longer registers a sigh or shrug, the bar gets raised on what comes next.

The Ethiopian American novelist, Dinaw Mengestu, resigned as President of American PEN after the organization released an internal report, “A Silent Moratorium,” on July 9, written by three of his distinguished members.

The authors interviewed more than 30 Israeli and Jewish writers and literary professionals and discovered that they are increasingly treated as pariahs—“facing rising isolation and exclusion”—within the publishing industry due entirely to a cultural boycott emanating from Israel’s war in Gaza.

Scheduled events were canceled and invitations withdrawn. Harassment on social media. Review-bombs on Goodreads. Online campaigns to shun anyone who has ever supported Israel or Zionism. Literary journals and magazines were suddenly off-limits. Agents dropped clients. Manuscripts were rejected before they were even submitted. Publicists refused to promote books unless the Jewish or Israeli material was excised.

The report states, “[These writers] describe an environment that has impacted their reputations and livelihoods, led people to self-censor, and created an overall chilling of their ability to write and create freely.”

Isn’t PEN’s primary purpose to serve as a watchdog to make it safe for writers to write and exercise their freedom of expression—avowedly, a mission to ensure the “freedom to write”? The ostensible aim of the report was to tacitly promise that PEN would no longer support any boycotts of Jews and Israelis.

It’s about time. Back in February, PEN failed to stand-up for an Israeli stand-up comedian whose shows in Beverly Hills and New York were blocked by protesters at the entrance to the venues. PEN’s official position was that the shows could have been spared had the comic publicly condemned his home country, which he refused to do.

Must Chinese American comedians condemn China’s persecution of its Muslim Uyghur population before being allowed to take the stage and tell some jokes?

Back in 2024, 500 writers signed a letter demanding that PEN condemn Israel. Are there similar petitions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan and Nigeria?

In 2015, PEN awarded its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the surviving cartoonists of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Nearly the entire staff had been murdered by Islamic terrorists because the magazine dared to mock Islam and the Prophet on seven of its covers. (Catholicism was satirized 21 times without incident.)

Several hundred PEN members, including some of America’s most celebrated writers, believed that these cartoonists, whose colleagues were gunned down by illiterate terrorists, did not deserve to be honored. After all, they had the audacity to insult Islam, whose followers are obligated by their sacred text to kill infidels at will.

Good to know that in PEN’s estimation, “by any means necessary” applies equally to both Jews and those who draw cartoons for a living.

PEN finally takes a critical look at what has been happening to Jewish writers, and its president resigns in protest. Mengestu posits that the boycotters of Israel have superior free-speech rights over Jewish writers—even those who are not Zionists and aren’t even writing about Jewish themes.

He deemed the report “unethical” because it negatively portrayed the BDS movement’s cultural war against Jewish writers—the very people his organization was created to protect. PEN did not strip individual members of their right to participate in boycotts. All it did was recognize the consequences the war in Gaza was having on writers, and committing itself, as an organization, to not culturally boycott Jews and Israelis.

That, in itself, was ironic, since PEN’s former longtime CEO, who happened to be Jewish, recently resigned because authors complained that PEN was insufficiently critical of Israel.

Simultaneous with this literary tumult, the writer Meg Keene published an op-ed augmenting the PEN report with hard data she cultivated from the Publishers Marketplace database, and anecdotes from many Jewish writers.

Shortly after the Gaza war began, published works of fiction by Jewish writers declined by 76%. In 2025, among the large publishing houses, books that even mentioned Jews, Judaism or Israel had declined by 47%. Apparently, this year will be even worse. Book contracts for Jewish fiction are down 82%.

Shortly after the Gaza war began, published works of fiction by Jewish writers declined by 76%. In 2025, among the large publishing houses, books that even mentioned Jews, Judaism or Israel had declined by 47%. Apparently, this year will be even worse.

In December 2024, The Telegraph in the United Kingdom reported a very similar publishing environment for British Jews.

This tale of censorship is bad for books and portends a death knell for literature. Jewish fiction writers dominated the second half of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st. Throughout history, societies that deliberately censor Jewish art and suppress Jewish achievement do not fare well culturally, economically and scientifically.

Societies that deliberately censor Jewish art and suppress Jewish achievement do not fare well culturally, economically and scientifically.

The situation in Hollywood is no less dire. In September 2025, thousands of film workers — headlined by the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Ava DuVernay and Tilda Swinton — vowed not to work with their Israeli counterparts. Naturally, that threat extended beyond Israel to include American Jews—especially those who were unapologetic Zionists.

We’re talking about the same film industry Jews purportedly control?

Upon its opening, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles forgot to mention that all five of the major studio heads—and two of the three smaller independent studios— were Jewish immigrants. These were the people who possessed the vision of turning the desert in Los Angeles into a company town and cinematic theme park.

And the Museum left them out of the picture?

Damien Chazelle’s anticipated blockbuster, “Babylon,” failed to draw both favorable press and box office receipts possibly because one of its three co-stars depicted a Mexican studio executive—in 1925!

Woke art comes with costs: consumers of culture know when artists aren’t being honest. They’ll turn away from art that simply does not ring true—even if it means rejecting a movie that showcases Margot Robbie pleasuring an ice sculpture.

Full disclosure: This week’s events felt profoundly personal to me. My last book, Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza, was not carried on the shelves of bookstores. It was available only online. Scheduled book events were canceled. Venues where I had always been welcomed with my prior books shut their doors. My agent of 30 years, also a friend, refused to represent the book. (I have a new agent.) I am finishing up a new novel with Jewish and racial themes. The book will have an uncertain publishing journey.

If you’re a Jewish dentist in Aventura or a Jewish real estate lawyer in Century City, none of this will have any meaning to you.

But it should. Because it’s real.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is a contributing writer for White Rose magazine. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”