Talia's most recent newsletters

 

January 2025:

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December 2024:

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October 2024:

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Israel--A Year after October 7

 

(This is a footnote to my November 2024 newsletter)

 My summary of a complex situation in Israel

 

My phone screen flashes every Israeli news channel in Hebrew and US news in English. My soul is there, in Israel, when sirens go off all day in multiple villages and cities and when the trauma of a country in war deepens.

The majority of Israelis were for fighting Hamas and for chasing them throughout Gaza until they are eliminated. It was never a retaliation, but a defense against a repeat of October 7, which Hamas promised was only "a dress rehearsal." So many have given their lives on both sides as this war is still to be won, while tortured hostages remain imprisoned. Now the mood in Israel has shifted, and many Israelis make the hostages' release a priority over eliminating Hamas. They are not against the war that daily costs the lives of the best of Israeli men and has destroyed the country's flourishing economy, because there is no choice when attacked from all sides. The all-mighty Iran has no territorial disputes with Israel, nor does it care for the Palestinians. It merely wants Israel wiped out.

           While the world's eyes were focused solely on the Gaza war--ignoring human misery in other 30 hot spots around the globe--since October 7, 2023, the Galilee (northern Israel) has been under Hezbollah bombardment. Over 100,000 Israelis had to abandon their homes and farms while the government attempted to avoid formally calling it a war--until it could ignore it no more.

Some of you have asked me for a reliable sources about the situation. Here are some suggestions: Middle East Forum, MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch, Israenet.org, UN Watch, and AIPAC, CIJA, Jewish Virtual Library, and HonestReporting.

           In the meantime, the highly unpopular PM Netanyahu is holding on to his fragile government by capitulating to the tyranny of the ultra-Orthodox who do not serve in the military. Tens of thousands lifelong yeshiva students with large families (ten children or more is the norm) live off government largess. The gap between those who give everything and those who only take has never been so wide. Therefore, when you hear about huge demonstrations against Netanyahu, those are fueled by anger over this social injustice--and by the gut-piercing angst over the hostages.

The country is fighting an existential war for survival, while being torn from within. Yet, the more Israelis face these challenges, the more they need us to support them, to let them know that they are not alone.

 

Talia's Most Recent Newsletters

 If you have missed, or want to catch up on prior updates, here are the links to my most recent newsletters. (To view previous one, please scroll down the blog):

October 2024: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2v21sw--1877pc-hh6iff7

September: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2upd06--17v22w-j3mj1xs2

August: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2udgml--17lixf-gd55yr6

July:  https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2udgml--17lixf-gd55yr6

June: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2tlegk--172n2p-gd55yr1

April: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2t37z0--16ks1y-gd55yr7

March: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2su6rc--16dmjt-gd55yr3

Feb: https://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/6dns-2sgr2g--160o2w-gd55yr6

For prior listing, please check: https://taltellstales.blogspot.com/2023/12/

Thanks for your interest!

The French L'Expresse about "Boycott of “Zionist” personalities"

 On June 4, 2024, the French Newspaper L'Expresse wrote about the trend in the U.S. of singling out Jewish personalities in the arts by publishing lists of Jewish authors and their supporters, as well as musicians and others supporters of Israel so they "understand that there are consequences to their choices."

https://www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-debats/boycott-de-personnalites-sionistes-les-dessous-glacants-de-ces-listes-devenues-virales-GWTIJAWBSJF33NLYESQRCHULFU/

Below is an imperfect Google translation of the article:

Boycott of “Zionist” personalities: the chilling underside of these lists that

have gone viral 

By Alix L’Hospital

 Conflict in the Middle East. Since the start of the war in Gaza, lists of names of celebrities to boycott have been circulating on social networks. The nomination criteria reveal the meaning given to “Zionism” by their detractors…

 Tell me what a “Zionist” is, I’ll tell you what becomes of “anti-Zionism”… In the 2010s, “lists” designating “Zionists” were teeming above all on a few conspiracy blogs with anti-Semitic tendencies. This was the case of Panamza, a blog obsessed with Israel and the Jews, or of Egalité & Réconciliation, the site of the far-right essayist Alain Soral, who published in 2019 a “Diagram of the Left” mapping in particular alleged heavyweights of “Zionism”. A reader struck by catalepsy a few years ago and awakened at the start of the war in Gaza would probably be stunned: in 2024, there is nothing confidential or subversive about these lists. They are available in portrait galleries on trendy Instagram accounts (a publication, a name, a Studio Harcourt-style photo) and in TikTok videos with an educational approach. Everything is “argued”, “sourced”, with a view to “informing” and, ultimately, boycotting.

 On Instagram, Zionists in Music now has nearly 16,000 subscribers, just two months after its first publication. By its own admission, the account acknowledges in an introductory post that the evolving list is “mainly composed of Jewish individuals”. But here, we promise, we do not condone anti-Semitism. The idea being "to enlighten musicians about their position within this industry and for them to recognize the impact of their choices", by targeting those who have "publicly supported Zionism". By this, Zionists in music means, for example, the fact of being subscribed to “Zionist accounts” on social networks, such as Jewish lives matter, Jewish Life Now, or even certain personalities committed against anti-Semitism such as Shai Davidai, professor Israeli of Jewish faith at Columbia Business School.

 This account is far from an isolated case. In second place, we find Zionists in films, more recent and on the verge of reaching 10,500 subscribers. Same concept, same visual identity. In the "tools" made available by the account there is also a call to "create more pages" of this kind, that is to say targeting "Zionists" in other sectors of activity such as government, mainstream media (MSM), academia, the army, banks, publishing, justice, medicine... Because according to Zionists in films, "to defeat Zionism, more Zionists need are unmasked and stigmatized. At the end of May, a new account dedicated to “Zionists in sport” appeared on Instagram.

 “Accomplices” Jew

 "Even if they are not overtly targeted because they are Jewish, highlighting the names of Jews who are not particularly politically engaged, but have, for example, simply shown empathy for Israelis after the jihadist massacre of October 7, called for peace, or have links with Jewish people committed to Israel betrays a reconstruction of the anti-Jewish imagination, analyzes Pierre-André Taguieff, philosopher, historian of ideas and honorary research director at the CNRS. Behind this process, we read the trial of bad Jews, "accomplices" Jews, having not given proof of their friendliness by not denying Israel, or by not supporting strongly enough, to the liking of the small prosecutors who establish these lists, the Palestinian cause. The cleverness lies in the fact that these lists also include 'non-Jews'. Very practical..." 

These accounts are only the emerging part of the phenomenon. On social networks, lists in the form of directories circulate using an URL link to a table that can be consulted by everyone. More discreet, but terribly effective. At the beginning of May, a document entitled "is your favorite author a zionist?" ("Is your favorite author a Zionist?"), listing nearly 200 names, for example went viral on Twitter. As we write these lines, several Internet users are still consulting it, according to real-time data from the shared document.

 Everything is neatly stored there. In blue: authors considered “pro-Palestine/ anti-Zionist”. In red, “pro-Israel/Zionist”. Significantly, most of those targeted are authors of young adult fiction. Here again, the reasons for the boycott are puzzling. The simple fact of having posted a message in support of the Israelis the day after the October 7 attack is enough, for example, to make Monica Murphy or Nicholas Sparks authors to be boycotted.

 Anti-Zionism recoded into humanism

 But there is more surprising: among the authors to be boycotted is also Rebecca Yarros, queen of “romantasy”. Among the wrongs of the author of the Fourth Wing phenomenon saga : being “married to a soldier”. As for SF specialist Pierce Brown, he has certainly written about apartheid, but he reads "Henry Kissinger, which doesn't help his case." Having fled Nazi persecution with his family in the late 1930s, the former Secretary of State was a controversial figure in American diplomacy during the Cold War, notably known for his role as mediator between Israel and the Arab countries after the Yom Kippur War. For its part, the Anti-Zionism recoded into humanism.

 Better: for being moved by the "horrible massacre of innocent civilians, first in Israel and now, in a catastrophically disproportionate manner, in Gaza", Laini Taylor, a novelist specializing in fantasy, is also given the same treatment. In reality, not "understanding" Hamas is already suspect. This is what earned science fiction author Michael Grant an “unclear” badge (a sort of “awaiting judgment”). Too bad if the latter was very critical of the “racist and extremist” government of “the crook Netanyahu”.

 Fantasy novelist Sarah J. Maas is accused of bringing to life characters expressing "colonialist ideologies without specifying that it is morally reprehensible". JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter saga ? A “Terf” (acronym designating a radical feminist excluding trans people), “so the discussion stops here”.

 "For the vast majority of Jews, 'Zionism' symbolizes emancipation and self determination. But the notion has been the subject of an operation of demonization similar to that which anti-Judaism has exercised against Jews. Jews for centuries.

"Zionism is thus on its way to becoming a synonym for everything that civilized people rightly abhor: racism, colonialism, warmongering, oppression," explains Rudy Reichstadt, political scientist, director of Conspiracy Watch and co-director of a Political History of Anti-Semitism in France If, historically, radical anti-Zionism was motivated by anti-Semitism, today, Rudy Reichstadt . describes an anti-Zionism "recoded into humanism which guides a whole part of the youth on the path of an anti-Semitism all the more dangerous as it advances sure of its right and freed from any bad conscience".

 “Zionists are demons”

 “I am on this list because I am Jewish, because I was born and raised in Israel,” novelist Talia Carner, labeled in red (“Zionist”), explains to L’Express. The author has had time to think about why she been pinned: her name has been circulating on various lists since December. "My latest book, The boy with the star tattoo, has been widely cited by 'antiZionists' who are calling for a boycott of me," she explains. "This book deals with Israeli issues, but all the events I describe in it are take place in France, first in 1946 (it is a story about orphans after the Second World War), then in 1969. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is never mentioned… As a Jew born in Israel , my detractors criticize me for not having written about the Palestinians – or insist that I shouldn't have written this book at all."

 On Goodreads, a platform listing reader reviews, the author suffered waves of denigration following her appearance on anti-Zionist lists. Among the comments regarding her latest book, we can read: "Zionist propaganda that practically ignores the nakba", "we do not support Zionist propaganda", "Zionists are demons"... Today, Talia Carner is forced to remain discreet where she travels, including during events open to the public.

 Do not trust the Englishness of most of these lists: France is far from being spared by the phenomenon. On TikTok, some very influential Frenchspeaking accounts invested in the concept very early on. Like Venomglazed, a young girl who loves literature. In a video published on October 19 intended for its nearly 50,000 subscribers, it offered in music a list of authors who “support [the] ethnic cleansing [of the Palestinian community]”, “proof” to support it. There we find Sarah J. Maas, “who claims to have left Israel with great joy, nostalgia and pride”. The proof is a screenshot: an article clearly mentioning the writer's Jewish origins and her relationship to Judaism. Likewise, LJ Shen, New Adult romance author whose “husband was enlisted in the Israeli armies and who proudly posts her husband’s profession”, is singled out. Too bad if the screenshot put forward to prove these statements dates from nine years ago. No matter, the issue is not here.

 --AL

 

Dear Authors' Guild Leadership: Anti-Semitism has "no two sides to the story."

 

              Dear Authors’ Guild Leadership;

         In recent months, anti-Semitism in the USA has reared its ugly head. It has manifested its vile words and actions in every public sphere, and soon found a target in Jewish authors and writers. The calls to ban Jewish authors’ books and to force mainstream publishers such as HarperCollins and Macmillan's to “deplatform” their Jewish authors has been exploding unchecked on social media, such as TikTok, Instagram and X.

            Beyond words, actions have soon followed. Scheduled Jewish authors’ events have been canceled and many venues would not invite them to present. Agents are turning down manuscripts by Jewish writers or are firing Jewish clients whose work they had agreed to represent. These gate-keepers of the publishing world know that acquisition editors will not buy them.  

            The virulent anti-Semitism against Jewish authors in the USA has been documented in recent articles in the New York Times and the New York Post. In the UK, The British Telegraph reported that half of British publishers will not accept manuscripts by Jewish authors. Yet the Authors’ Guild, which should have been the first to raise its voice in indignation over the atrocious hate-fest against a significant portion of its members, has been kept mum.

            Silence is loud. Silence is screaming. The Authors’ Guild which has spoken in no uncertain terms against banning books, which has taken pride in advocating for authors, and which declares in its mission statement to serve as the voice for authors, is yet to issue a statement of disgust and condemnation of the hate speech and outright actions taken against its Jewish members.

            In 1933, in over 20 cities in Germany, fires were set to burn books written by Jews. Those books were the cornerstone of what we consider our Western civilization, written by Franz Werfel, Max Brod, Stefan Zweig,  Einstein, and Freud among them. German newspapers triumphantly reported that “Germany was purging itself of Jews” because silencing and destroying Jewish voices was only an early step to what we all now know came next.

            The Holocaust did not begin with incinerators. It began with words.

            In 2020, the Authors’ Guild passed a resolution against racism. Isn’t the singling out Jewish authors not only for discrimination and scorn but also for actions against them is the ultimate racism? We, Jewish members of the Authors’ Guild—and Jewish writers everywhere—deserve the same consideration, sympathy, and protection that you have generously and rightfully extended to our brothers and sisters who are Black writers and writers of color.

            What has happened to your moral compass that you allow attacks on Jewish authors go on for months without a response?

            Dear leaders of the Authors’ Guild: Anti-Semitism has no “two sides of the story.” It has one side, and it is ugly and dangerous. Unless you speak up, you are taking the position of the evil.

 

Sincerely,

 Talia Carner

Authors’ Guild Member since 1997

www.TaliaCarner.com

           

This letter was sent to Staff@authorsguild.org with the request to distribute it to each person in a leadership, council, honorary, or staff role.  

AN UPDATE: In late June 2024, The Authors' Guild issued a statement:

"The Authors Guild condemns censoring, threatening, or blacklisting authors. We are aware of recent incidents in which presses have refused to publish articles and speaking engagements have been canceled based on the writer’s religious or national identity or their views relating to Israel or Palestine, as well as attempts to “blacklist” authors. We abhor antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry and discrimination intended to chill writers’ freedom of expression."   

 

 

A Letter to a Peace-Loving Humanitarian

 

The following letter is my response to an activist who tried to recruit me for his cause of "Strategy of Nonviolence, For the Children." 

Dear Mr. Sheldon,

          Thank you for writing to me, as it gives me the opportunity to explain that despite your good intentions, your initiative is, unfortunately, misguided, if not outright hateful and fateful.

            The idea of an enforced cease-fire between Israel, a democratic state and Hamas, a terror organization, means only one thing: the terror organization will continue to pursue its declared goal of eliminating Israel and killing its entire population. You will be prohibiting Israel from responding to murderous attacks on her populace. Not only has Hamas been showering Israel for years with thousands of daily missiles aimed at the civilian population—which had not prompted you to announce an initiative to force Hamas to stop—but Hamas broke every ceasefire ever negotiated with them. 

            How is your forcing Israel to stop fighting Hamas promotes peace? All it will do is strengthen and legitimize the terror organization which has declared that October 7th was only “a rehearsal” and that it would continue to repeat these barbaric atrocities to eliminate Israel. 

            Why isn’t your first call to demand that Hamas return the hostages? Why doesn’t your “strategy for non-violence” begin with a demand that Hamas surrender and stop using the Palestinian population as human shields? 

            You’ve had plenty of chances to take initiative. For years you could have demanded that US and Europe stop funneling money through the UN to perpetuate indefinite refugee status of the Palestinians. Tens of millions of displaces people after WWII had long been resettled. None is claiming to be a refugee three generations later, even while living in other countries, where they have made a home. Definitely not the Jews, who’d lost more than any other ethnic or national group. 

            Why haven’t you demanded—or demanding now—that the Arab countries who had exploited these people in 1948 with their murderous intention of annihilating Israel, now take responsibility for the results? None has ever offered to absorb a single Palestinian family. In fact, most have enacted apartheid laws against the Palestinians’ entry and integration. Unlike Israel which had provided employment to tens of thousands Gazans daily, Egypt had sealed its border with Gaza. 

            For your information, in 1948, the population in Gaza was about 300,000. It has since swelled to 2 million. In 2030, Gaza's population is projected to reach 3 million. Yes, in only six years it will grow by 50%. Whose responsibility is that? Where do you want these people to live? 

            Asking the question differently: What should the world do for this population you so care about when it grows additional 50% six years later, reaching over 4 million? Taking over modern-day Israel and killing the Jews living there? 

            Why haven’t you cried out your indignation when, for 75 years, UNRWA-sponsored schools taught children not only how to hate Jews, but how to use weapons to kill them, viewing Jews as less than humans? Why haven’t you cried out when you heard time and again that Palestinian parents’ greatest hopes for their children were for them to become “martyrs” who kill Jews? Where was your initiative when your tax dollars paid for militant summer camps teaching Palestinian children to kill? 

            What you now learn about children killed in Gaza, is that thousands of them are teenagers fighting as terrorists they had been indoctrinated to become. What was your strategy of non-violence for these children then, and what is it now? 

            The atrocities visited upon the Jews on October 7th were rarely recorded in their intensity, barbarism, and severity in modern human history. Yet, your past silence allowed it to happen. Your future “initiative” will make such final genocide of Jews in Israel a fact. 

            Where are your Christian sensitivities and benevolence when you accept the beheading of Jewish babies in their cribs and the lopping off of women’s breasts? What about shooting nails into women’s vaginas? How about gouging out a father’s eyes in front of his children, or burning a whole family alive in their home? 

            This will be the fate of the Jews under the repeat torture and massacre that your “non-violent cease-fire” will bring.  

            Cease-fire does not mean non-violence as you state. It means increased violence against the Jews of Israel. That is exactly what you preach. 

            Yes, Mr. Sheldon, there is a lot of work to be done, but the first of it is to support Israel which is under constant, unrelenting attack by terrorists whose actions against both populations—Israelis and Palestinians—are accepted by you and by other misguided good souls cheered on by mobs of anti-Semites. The cost of the war to both sides is enormous, but stopping it before it achieves its ultimate goal of eliminating Hamas only means the end of Israel, while giving legitimacy to a terror organization.  

            You can help stop the war. When you present your views to your list of misguided supporters and to the UN Secretary-General, please demand that the onus for achieving peace is on the world to stop terrorism. Demand Hamas’s unconditional surrender, just as ISIS was defeated. Demand the immediate return the hostages—and the end the war on Israel. 

            Please do not shift your gaze, for one minute, from the one entity that can stop the war: Hamas. 

            By doing so you’ll be freeing the Palestinian people, who may not be enamored of Israel, but whose suffering is wholly the result of years of oppression, corruption, and savagery by Hamas. Without Hamas, the war with Israel will stop and, with time and a different educational approach, these people may begin to have a vision of peace and prosperity. 

            It’s a simple as that. 

            Then you may turn to the world to fix the evil of UNRWA and the barbaric teaching of hate under its sponsorship. You may see future funding of Gaza not exploited for the construction of war-designated tunnels, but for the civilian purposes of building a society whose institutions carry out a vision of economic growth. 

            Mr. Sheldon, I urge you to rechannel your energy to support Israel, not to make her the victim of another Holocaust, as Hamas promises to do.

 Shalom,

Talia Carner

www.TaliaCarner.com 

Talia Carner is a novelist with HarperCollins. Her latest novel is THE BOY WITH THE STAR TATTOO. 

Sharon, an assistant to an Israeli naval officer stationed in Normandy, France, is intent on tracing his orphan roots to the French village from where he had been rescued post-WWII. When she identifies the mother who had tragically lost him, Sharon is unprepared for the shock of her discovery.

 

 

Previous Talia's newsletters

 To read author Talia Carner's most recent newsletters, please check:

* March 2024: In the Wake of Churning Waters

* Launched, February 2024

* The Count Down, January 2024 and Pre-Launch

* Special Edition: Late Fall 2023, sent November 1, 2023. To read it online, Late Fall 2023  

* Fall 2023, sent September 14, 2023. To read it online,  Fall 2023  

* Summer 2023, sent July 27, 2023. To read it online, please click on Summer 2023