Jewish cartoonist Miriam Libicki has was banned from the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival. The excuse given was that anyone who has ever served in the Israeli Defense Forces cannot participate in the Festival. This means that ALL Israeli Jews (who are required by law to serve in the IDF) are prohibited from the Festival. That means that about HALF of all Jews in world are banned.
The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival later apologized and probably unbanned her. But their apology was so vaguely worded that it really isn’t clear that the ban has been officially lifted. (Read it here.)
Here is fairly detailed account, by Sam Margolis of the Canadian Jewish News, of what happened – although Margolis’ article was written prior to the “VanCAF Formal Apology” linked to above:
https://thecjn.ca/news/miriam-libicki/
Hopefully the end result will be that more people become familiar with Miriam Libicki’s amazing work. Check out her wonderful graphic novel “How Soviet Jews Changed the World”:
https://conversationalist.org/2021/07/29/how-the-soviet-jews-changed-the-world-a-graphic-tale-of-tragedy-and-triumph/
And here is her website (with lots more of her work):
https://realgonegirl.com/
photo from timesofisrael.com
There is now a private Facebook group: “