This was really difficult for me to read. These two responses quoted in the article stuck out to me: What this woman wrote is her grappling with her own emotional havoc from what for her country...
This was really difficult for me to read. These two responses quoted in the article stuck out to me:
Emily Fox Kaplan, a Jewish writer who had shared the essay before it was retracted, wrote that she saw the criticism of Chen’s essay as part of a much wider dynamic.
“The problem, when it really comes down to it, is that it presents an Israeli as human,” she tweeted. “The people who are losing their minds about this want to believe that there are no civilians in Israel. They want a simple good guys/bad guys binary, and this creates cognitive dissonance.”
Some non-Jewish writers also lamented the piece’s retraction.
“Anyone who wants to seriously grapple with war had better be prepared for far more shocking opinions than are found in this thoughtful essay by a translator and writer living in Israel,” tweeted Phil Klay, a US military veteran whose writing draws on his war experiences. “Shame on @GuernicaMag for pulling it down
What this woman wrote is her grappling with her own emotional havoc from what for her country was worse than 9/11 (proportionally) and then reasserting her empathy. If what she feels isn't OK, isn't allowed... The only words I could use to describe here is absolute purism. With purism, there is no ability for finding middle grounds, problem solving, compromises. No recognition of mutual humanity, with all of its flaws. Chen opinion isn't valid, isn't allowed to be said out loud unless she suppresses her own lived experience and struggles in reaching it.
I have a group of Jewish friends, ranging from secular to orthodox, several of whom are LGBTQ+. We've all had difficult discussions in what had previously been safe spaces over the last few months. Sometimes as much as asking for a dialogue with a friend over what reads as anti-semetism, or even just asking to temporarily drop a difficult topic in a group chat has lead to hostility, anger, or even public denuciations. It can make you feel like there is no space in the world for you. Space to grieve, space to be worry about the very real hatred that has been stoked, space to be afraid for your loved ones...
Amid criticism from staff members and others, a prestigious literary magazine has retracted an essay by an Israeli writer and translator wrestling with her attempts to find mutual understanding with Palestinians after the Hamas-led massacre of October 7.
Guernica magazine did not explain the retraction over the weekend, but said it “regrets having published” the essay by Joanna Chen, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.”
The retraction came after multiple members of the journal’s volunteer staff resigned publicly over the essay.
...
Guernica’s case stands out because Chen, and her essay, are deeply critical of Israel. Chen, a writer and translator of both Hebrew and Arabic work who moved to Israel from the United Kingdom as a teenager, wrote for Guernica in 2015 about her efforts not to build on land from which Palestinians had been displaced. In the retracted essay, she details her commitment to coexistence and frets over the ways in which Hamas’s October 7 onslaught on Israel has challenged it.
...
Chen writes about how she refused to serve in the Israel Defense Forces and worked as a volunteer for Road to Recovery, an organization in which Israelis provide transport for Palestinians who are seeking medical care, both before and after Hamas’s attack (while briefly pausing in the immediate aftermath). She also recalls an experience donating blood to Palestinians during Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza, for which she received blowback from other Israelis. But she says the bridges she had been working to build felt impossible to complete after October 7.
“It is not easy to tread the line of empathy, to feel passion for both sides,” Chen writes in the piece, which also includes translated excerpts from Hebrew- and Arabic-language poems. It remains available online through the Internet Archive.
Of two Gaza-based poets she works with, Chen wrote, “Their voices are important ones, and I want the English-speaking world to listen to them as much as I want the world to listen to the voices I translate from Hebrew.”
I think it's important to highlight why some folks are calling for its retraction:
I think it's important to highlight why some folks are calling for its retraction:
Joshua Gutterman Tranen, an anti-Zionist Jewish writer who has published in Guernica in the past, specifically pointed out a passage he found objectionable in which Chen briefly pauses her volunteer work after October 7, writing, “How could I continue after Hamas had massacred and kidnapped so many civilians, including Road to Recovery members, such as Vivian Silver, a longtime Canadian peace activist? And I have to admit, I was afraid for my own life.”
“The moment in the Guernica essay where the Israeli writer — who never considers why Palestinian children don’t have access to adequate healthcare b/c of colonization and apartheid — says she has to stop assisting them getting medical support because of ‘Hamas,’” Tranen tweeted. “This is genocidal.”
This criticism doesn’t hold water. Chen’s essay is more than worth the time it takes to read, and very much does acknowledge the inherent imbalance imposed by the Israeli state on the Palestinian...
Exemplary
This criticism doesn’t hold water. Chen’s essay is more than worth the time it takes to read, and very much does acknowledge the inherent imbalance imposed by the Israeli state on the Palestinian people.
Nuance, reading comprehension; let’s just go ahead and slap those little guys on the critically endangered list, because — for goodness’ sake, even the poetry she selected speaks so eloquently for itself. How much bitterly myopic dogmatism did these people bring into their reading of this writing to twist the narrative so terribly?
From the retracted-for-being-too-offensive-to-our-sensibilities piece:
Two weeks after the present war began, I took the plunge and again began driving children to hospitals. My own grown-up children were against this, but I was determined to go. The night before my first drive since the war started, my husband and I decided he would accompany me, just in case. My son scoffed at this: Go on your own if you must, he said wryly. If anything happens, we don’t want to lose both our parents. We woke up at 5:00 a.m., made coffee, and waited for the coordinator to give me the go-ahead. The rules had changed: instead of waiting for them in the parking lot of Tarkumia, I was instructed to leave the house only when my passengers had gotten through security. At 6:30, I got the call, and we drove in silence to Tarkumia. The road leading to the checkpoint was deserted; since October 7, Palestinians had been forbidden to leave the West Bank for work in Israel.
We arrived at the parking lot, and I got out of the car. A small boy with a shock of black hair and his father were waiting at the other side of the parking lot. I hesitated as a soldier came up to me, and I fumbled for my driver’s license and the details of my passengers, sent to me earlier: Jad, age three, accompanied by his father. Suddenly, the little boy waved to me from across the way, and I waved back as they walked over to my car. The father spoke a little Hebrew. We introduced ourselves, quickly strapped Jad into the booster, and drove away. Ten minutes later, I dropped my husband off at the junction below my house. I felt safe. I was doing the right thing. This boy deserves medical treatment; he is not a part of the war, I thought. On this first journey, I focused on only the job at hand: to get Jad to the hospital. An hour later, I said goodbye to them outside the pediatric unit of Sheba Medical Center. While the father busied himself removing an overnight case from the trunk of my car, I unbuckled Jad from the booster, and he held out his arms and smiled up at me. Shukran, shukran, thank you, the father said as I cradled Jad in my arms for a moment. And I wanted to say, No, thank you for trusting me with your child. Thank you for reminding me that we can still find empathy and love in this broken world. I followed them with my eyes as they disappeared behind the glass doors of the hospital, and then I switched the radio on.
Two weeks of pause to rebalance emotionally before plunging right back ahead into action largely deemed as stupid, traitorous madness on one side, and hopelessly never enough on the other. Brava to this lady, and what a fucking dunce that Tranen character is for equating Chen’s deeds and words from this essay as supportive in any way of genocide.
She personally afraid after a massacre, temporarily stops volunteering and writes about her fear, and this is genocidal? She's not calling for the ngo to stop operating if I understand correctly...
She personally afraid after a massacre, temporarily stops volunteering and writes about her fear, and this is genocidal?
She's not calling for the ngo to stop operating if I understand correctly
Edit: she stopped for two weeks. She now continues to drive patients from the border.
I hate that they retracted her essay. I think it's important to note how these people should be able to live peacefully side-by-side, and they can't. She's doing good work. I think the modern...
I hate that they retracted her essay. I think it's important to note how these people should be able to live peacefully side-by-side, and they can't. She's doing good work. I think the modern anti-zionists choose not to understand the history of the situation and choose not to understand why the land is the way it is and the people living there - all the people living on that land - have every right to live there now.
The Right-wing Israeli government and Hamas are the problem here, not the people trying to live their lives, whether they be Palestinian or Israeli.
In a note to readers, Guernica founder Michael Archer wrote that the “piece felt jarring in both its timing and its approach” and took responsibility for its retraction. Change is afoot, he declared: “Moving forward, we will ensure that our decision-making processes are more transparent, our editorial engagement is more collaborative; and our accountability practices are clearer.” The magazine also announced [a] new publisher, Magogodi aoMphela Makhene.
…
Whereas the Guernica masthead in January listed about 50 people, it now lists about a dozen, thanks at least in part to staff dismay over Chen’s essay. Some staffers wrote impassioned posts on X outlining their rationales for turning in their passcodes. They left behind a labor of love: Guernica is run entirely by volunteers. Jina Moore Ngarambe, who took over as editor in chief in 2021, resigned her post on April 5: “The magazine stands by its retraction of the work; I do not. Guernica will continue, but I am no longer the right leader for its work,” wrote Ngarambe.
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Following the Guernica retraction, the Washington Monthly picked up the essay and published it with an italicized explanation dissenting from all the critiques. How did it land? “The reaction was overwhelmingly positive from left, right, and center,” noted Matthew Cooper, the Monthly’s executive editor for digital.
The essay is not bad, but it still has something which doesn't really sit right with me. But it's subtle, and even if I tried putting it into words, this would be yesterdays news beforehand. That...
The essay is not bad, but it still has something which doesn't really sit right with me. But it's subtle, and even if I tried putting it into words, this would be yesterdays news beforehand.
That said, the article is rather heavy on genocide-denial and the usual Israelic martyrdom roundabout.
I was thinking of this bit, where the journalist take offence of the word "genocidal" (used in a different context) and use the Israelic governments words that they are the good guys as proof....
I was thinking of this bit, where the journalist take offence of the word "genocidal" (used in a different context) and use the Israelic governments words that they are the good guys as proof. This if followed by a counterargument to the word "colonization and apartheid" where the journalist pulls the "black best friend" argument. (which is in stark contrast which everything showing up if you google israel black depotation)
“The moment in the Guernica essay where the Israeli writer — who never considers why Palestinian children don’t have access to adequate healthcare b/c of colonization and apartheid — says she has to stop assisting them getting medical support because of ‘Hamas,’” Tranen tweeted. “This is genocidal.”
Israel strenuously rejects the charge that it is committing genocide, saying it takes measures to avoid killing civilians. Its supporters, including a cohort of Black Jews who have vocally defended Israel online in recent months, dispute that it is a “white” country, noting that a large portion of its Jewish population has roots in the Middle East and North Africa.
Question: Am I incorrect in assuming that, in both this comment and the last, you are specifically critiquing the article written by JTA and the TOI staff about Chen’s essay, and not Chen’s essay...
Question: Am I incorrect in assuming that, in both this comment and the last, you are specifically critiquing the article written by JTA and the TOI staff about Chen’s essay, and not Chen’s essay itself?
Because, it seems as if the two replies here are directly addressing the Chen essay, and, truth be told, that’s initially also the article I’d thought you were commenting about before the addition of this latest comment with the quote.
What I’m saying here is that I am somewhat confused, lol.
My intial feeling was that people should read better, and understand that I was talking about the article when I wrote "the article". However, I realize that I should simply have written better....
My intial feeling was that people should read better, and understand that I was talking about the article when I wrote "the article". However, I realize that I should simply have written better. My comment is missing a middle part connecting the two different lines. Something about that while I don't find the essay all that objectable, the way the article frame the story warrents a closer scrutiny, etc, etc. I think I fall into the trap of modern online prose where you don't as much put your thought to paper as you boil it down to a simplified declaration.
I think I understand you better. The Israeli newspaper does soft-pedal the issue. However the article that was removed from the Literary magazine does not, which is why people are unhappy it was...
I think I understand you better. The Israeli newspaper does soft-pedal the issue. However the article that was removed from the Literary magazine does not, which is why people are unhappy it was removed
Archive link is here. I think it’s a pretty good essay.
Perhaps more people will read it due to the controversy than otherwise?
This was really difficult for me to read. These two responses quoted in the article stuck out to me:
What this woman wrote is her grappling with her own emotional havoc from what for her country was worse than 9/11 (proportionally) and then reasserting her empathy. If what she feels isn't OK, isn't allowed... The only words I could use to describe here is absolute purism. With purism, there is no ability for finding middle grounds, problem solving, compromises. No recognition of mutual humanity, with all of its flaws. Chen opinion isn't valid, isn't allowed to be said out loud unless she suppresses her own lived experience and struggles in reaching it.
I have a group of Jewish friends, ranging from secular to orthodox, several of whom are LGBTQ+. We've all had difficult discussions in what had previously been safe spaces over the last few months. Sometimes as much as asking for a dialogue with a friend over what reads as anti-semetism, or even just asking to temporarily drop a difficult topic in a group chat has lead to hostility, anger, or even public denuciations. It can make you feel like there is no space in the world for you. Space to grieve, space to be worry about the very real hatred that has been stoked, space to be afraid for your loved ones...
...
I think it's important to highlight why some folks are calling for its retraction:
This criticism doesn’t hold water. Chen’s essay is more than worth the time it takes to read, and very much does acknowledge the inherent imbalance imposed by the Israeli state on the Palestinian people.
Nuance, reading comprehension; let’s just go ahead and slap those little guys on the critically endangered list, because — for goodness’ sake, even the poetry she selected speaks so eloquently for itself. How much bitterly myopic dogmatism did these people bring into their reading of this writing to twist the narrative so terribly?
From the retracted-for-being-too-offensive-to-our-sensibilities piece:
Two weeks of pause to rebalance emotionally before plunging right back ahead into action largely deemed as stupid, traitorous madness on one side, and hopelessly never enough on the other. Brava to this lady, and what a fucking dunce that Tranen character is for equating Chen’s deeds and words from this essay as supportive in any way of genocide.
It's another unfortunate side effect of Twitter call-out culture
She personally afraid after a massacre, temporarily stops volunteering and writes about her fear, and this is genocidal?
She's not calling for the ngo to stop operating if I understand correctly
Edit: she stopped for two weeks. She now continues to drive patients from the border.
I hate that they retracted her essay. I think it's important to note how these people should be able to live peacefully side-by-side, and they can't. She's doing good work. I think the modern anti-zionists choose not to understand the history of the situation and choose not to understand why the land is the way it is and the people living there - all the people living on that land - have every right to live there now.
The Right-wing Israeli government and Hamas are the problem here, not the people trying to live their lives, whether they be Palestinian or Israeli.
An update on what’s happened since:
Opinion: Guernica doubles down on retraction of essay on Israel-Gaza war - Erik Wemple (Washington Post)
…
…
The essay is not bad, but it still has something which doesn't really sit right with me. But it's subtle, and even if I tried putting it into words, this would be yesterdays news beforehand.
That said, the article is rather heavy on genocide-denial and the usual Israelic martyrdom roundabout.
I don’t see anything that looks like denial. But maybe it’s missing context that you think should be included?
If I were the editor, I might have paired the article with one written by a Palestinian
I was thinking of this bit, where the journalist take offence of the word "genocidal" (used in a different context) and use the Israelic governments words that they are the good guys as proof. This if followed by a counterargument to the word "colonization and apartheid" where the journalist pulls the "black best friend" argument. (which is in stark contrast which everything showing up if you google israel black depotation)
Question: Am I incorrect in assuming that, in both this comment and the last, you are specifically critiquing the article written by JTA and the TOI staff about Chen’s essay, and not Chen’s essay itself?
Because, it seems as if the two replies here are directly addressing the Chen essay, and, truth be told, that’s initially also the article I’d thought you were commenting about before the addition of this latest comment with the quote.
What I’m saying here is that I am somewhat confused, lol.
Yeah, I'm talking about the article which criticize the tweet which criticize the essay. Sorry about the confusion.
Ah, I see! Thank you for the clarification.
My intial feeling was that people should read better, and understand that I was talking about the article when I wrote "the article".
However, I realize that I should simply have written better. My comment is missing a middle part connecting the two different lines. Something about that while I don't find the essay all that objectable, the way the article frame the story warrents a closer scrutiny, etc, etc. I think I fall into the trap of modern online prose where you don't as much put your thought to paper as you boil it down to a simplified declaration.
I think I understand you better. The Israeli newspaper does soft-pedal the issue. However the article that was removed from the Literary magazine does not, which is why people are unhappy it was removed
Peacemakers frequently suffer during war time.