The arts scene turned on me for supporting Israel.

Unless we actively fight back, we are at risk of losing the vital Diaspora culture that has made the West hotbeds of innovative Jewish creativity during the last hundred years.

photo: Arik Shraga/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay written by Hal Niedzviecki, an author of 12 books of fiction and nonfiction.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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In 1995, I started an independent arts magazine based out of Toronto.

After almost 30 years, we were proudly on the verge of publishing our 104th issue this past Fall, when the magazine abruptly closed.

Did we overspend on unnecessary flourishes? Was our editorial package outmoded? Did the price of paper suddenly quadruple?

None of the above.

The magazine had to close because its publisher — yours truly — did something truly awful: He openly supported the Jewish People and Israel.

My magazine was called “Broken Pencil.” It was devoted to promoting free speech, free expression, and independent creative action. It was an arts magazine and did not take stands on global affairs or international politics.

However, on my own personal social media, I have always been openly proud of my Jewish heritage. When October 7th occurred, I expressed my solidarity with Israel for the unimaginable loss — so many murdered, raped, tortured, and kidnapped.

I could not but help notice that most of the Canadian arts scene maintained a “neutral” silence. Within a few days, though, many organizations and individual artists rediscovered their identity-politics talking points and began to accuse the Jewish People of colonization. Some praised October 7th as “resistance.”

When protest camps started featuring an alliance between Islamists and various Left-wing factions ranging from Queers for Gaza to “Jewish” Voice for Peace, I’d seen more than enough.

I began to push back on my social media. I couldn’t stay silent. The entire Left-wing project of identity politics in which all “white” people are colonialist racists was being turned on the less than one percent of the Canadian population who are Jewish, and the single Jewish country in the Muslim dominated Middle East.

Apparently, when it came to the most oppressed minority of the 20th century, the supposed principles of equity and anti-racism no longer applied.

Since my personal social media isn’t exactly robust, my comments didn’t get much reaction. The magazine continued as usual. But as the summer of 2024 turned to fall, things took a turn. Arts activists began reposting screenshots of my tweets on “Broken Pencil” social media.

They demanded to know if “Broken Pencil” was also “pro genocide and hate.” They called me a “ZioNazi” and encouraged subscribers to cancel. By the Fall of 2024, almost every post “Broken Pencil” made online was met by someone demanding to know how much genocide loving Hal Niedzviecki was being paid and was it true that “Broken Pencil” received funding from the “Zionist Entity”?

In November, disgusted with the harassment, I decided to close the magazine. An era had ended, both for me and the cultural community the magazine celebrated.

I didn’t close the magazine because of lost revenue or the harassment. I closed it because I felt ashamed that I was involved in a culture that couldn’t even stand up for the most basic rights of free speech. I did not want to work on behalf of this cultural community. It was time to go.

So what’s the lesson for Jewish people working in the arts in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere?

I have heard of many Jewish creators silently slipping away into the night rather than attempting to confront one-sided narratives that glorify “intifada.” If they don’t slip away, they are often pushed out.

In Vancouver, a comics festival banned an Israeli Canadian graphic novelist because her first work more than a decade ago was a memoir of her time serving in the Israeli army. (Exhibitors claimed they felt “unsafe” in her presence.)

Noga Arez, an Israeli pop star who had previously spoke out against the current Israeli coalition’s policies, recently took to social media to announce that her gigs were being cancelled simply because of “where she was born.”

In a now-infamous moment, a Brooklyn bookstore canceled a Jewish writer’s book launch because one of the participants supported Israel’s right to exist.

On the larger map, there have been reports that agents and publisher are rejecting manuscripts with Jewish themes. Disney-owned Marvel studios announced that an openly Israeli-Jewish superhero set to make an appearance in the 2025 “Captain America” movie would henceforth be known as “Russian.”

Unless you loudly and frequently disavow Israel’s right to exist, you will be considered persona non grata in many arts scenes across the West. My takeaway from what happened at “Broken Pencil” is that there is no point trying to seek acceptance based on your previous Left-wing bonafides or anything else.

In the midst of the onslaught against me, the editors at “Broken Pencil” took to social media to explain that I didn’t set the editorial direction of the magazine, my remuneration was in fact pitifully low, and that the magazine inclined to a “pro-Palestinian” stance. Even more fevered attacks against me and the organization followed.

So, how can we ensure that Jewish artists and creators don’t disappear from an increasingly antisemitic cultural scene?

There are, as I see it, two ways to move forward. The first is to enlarge and extend the Jewish arts scene that already exists. Here I’m talking about the Jewish film, music, arts, and book festivals that already exist within and for the Jewish community. We need to strengthen these institutions and fund new organizations where they don’t exist but should.

However, it should be noted that these are primarily organizations which show and present work. They do not gestate and develop, which means that in order to replace governmental and secular cultural organizations which no longer tolerate Jewish voices, we need to encourage these organizations or perhaps start new ones that can support Jewish artistic projects in the form of direct entitlements and grants.

This is only a partial solution. In the 19th and early 20^th centuries, Jewish artists and performers made work, primarily in Yiddish, for an entirely Jewish audience. Singers, vaudevillians, poets, and orators preformed and became famous in the Ashkenazi world. But with few exceptions, this work never made it out of the Jewish community.

Since then, we’ve seen a different dynamic with many openly Jewish creators reaching across divides and going mainstream. Jewish creators — from Isaac Singer and Barbara Streisand to Sammy Davis Jr., Jonathan Goldstein, Larry David, and Regina Spector — have been literally everywhere. They have been some of our greatest ambassadors.

So strengthening and broadening Jewish cultural organizations is only part of the solution. We should not cede the mainstream even though arts scenes dominated by identity politics and Marxist obsessions with oppression are now, in my opinion, permanently closed to Jews. We still have friends, just not where we thought we did.

Can we make alliances and foster new cultural partnerships? I think we can.

There are those rare arts organizations — production companies, theatres centres, publishers — that don’t bow to the new antisemitism posing as equity and diversity. We need to prioritize identifying and reaching out to those organizations.

Secondly, I know that there are organizations which desperately want to drop out of the endless posturing of DEI¹-inspired programming and purges of Jewish creatives. But they are too afraid that they will loss funding, sponsors, donors and audience. Again, Jewish communities should identify these organizations and individuals and support them.

What would that look like? It may mean joining with an established smaller publisher to launch a new imprint of Jewish infused literary fiction, or working with an organization to help mount and market plays like “The Runner” — a play set in Israel that leftists successfully pressured a theatre to cancel early in 2024.

Or perhaps it’s an emergency fund: losing subscribers or audience because the Left doesn’t like your artistic choices? We will cover your losses and champion your bravery! There are many means to achieve the goal of not allowing Jewish voices to be disappeared.

These are difficult times for the Jewish arts. I’m terribly saddened by what happened to my magazine, which was beloved not just to me but to the many people whose lives were touched by it over the years. We are being forced to leave certain spaces and places.

Unless we actively fight back, we are at risk of losing the vital Diaspora culture that has made the West hotbeds of innovative Jewish creativity during the last hundred years.

But all is not lost.

We can turn this hatred into opportunity and create new, even more resilient cultural institutions infused with a renewed sense of Yiddishkeit — 21st-century style.

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1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion