Here is an article that is mostly a post-ban interview with the artist Miriam Libicki. It also includes the complete text of the original “accountability statement” in which Libicki’s banning from the Vancouver Comic Art Festival (VanCAF) was announced to the public (but somehow without actually ever mentioning her by name!):
MIRIAM LIBICKI ON VANCAF, BANNINGS, AND POLITICAL PROTESTS by Zach Rabiroff, The Comics Journal, June 12, 2024
And here is another article that gives some further details, including some interesting tidbits of the backlash that forced VanCAF to back down:
VanCAF resignations and board change follow controversial ban of Miriam Libicki by Dean Simons, Comics Beat, 06/04/2024
Personally I see this as cause for at least some measure of cautious optimism. In the current climate of world-wide unhinged hatred for Israel, Libicki’s initial banning was completely predictable. What wasn’t predictable was that there would be sufficient outcry against the banning to force VanCAF to reverse their decision and publicly apologize.
And here is an hour long presentation by Miriam Libicki (“I talk about my whole career and I do a reading from my work in progress at the end”) that she did a year ago:
Libicki’s book, Jobnik! is currently sold out on Amazon:
And here is her page at the Jewish Book Council (where you’ll find more articles by her, interviews, and more information about her work):
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/miriam-libicki
The melancholy and disgraceful fact being established that, in these closing decades of the nineteenth century, the long-suffering Jew is still universally exposed to injustice, proportioned to the barbarity of the nation that surrounds him, from the indescribable atrocities of the Russian mobs, through every degree of refined insult to petty mortifications, the inevitable result has been to arouse most thinking Jews the necessity of a vigrous and concerted action of defense. They have long enough practiced to no purpose the doctrine which Christendom has been content to preach, and which was inculcated by one of their own race, when the right cheek was smitten to turn the left. They have proved themselves willing and able to assimilate with whatever people and endure every climatic influence. But blind intolerance and ignorance are now forcibly driving them into that position which they have so long hesitated to assume. They must establish an independent nationality …. I am fully persuaded that all suggested solutions other than this of the Jewish problem are but temporary palliatives.
The name Emma Lazarus might not ring a bell, but you are certainly familiar with her work. She wrote the poem “The New Colossus”, which is engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus published her first poetry collection when whe was just 18 years old (some of the poems had been written when she was just 14). In fact, Lazarus, who died in 1887 at the age of 38, would not live long enough to witness the the first World Zionist Congress, which took place in Basel, Switzerland, in August, 1897. That historic gathering was a direct result of the growing realization so clearly expressed by Lazarus that “all suggested solutions other than this [Zionism] of the Jewish problem are but temporary palliatives.”
Also while still quite young I became a socialist. In high school my “activism” was limited to reading books and writing papers on subjects like Ho Chi Minh, the Haymarket Martyrs, and the Chinese Revolution. But when I went to college I finally found other like-minded leftists to work together with. I enthusiastically threw myself into the anti-apartheid movement, which had gained a lot of momentum thanks to the Soweto uprising and it’s brutal supression. I also worked for the ERA (remember the ERA??). I even got involved in labor solidarity (there was a strike by the Teamsters at a local Coca-Cola bottling plant). The list goes on.
After college I was able to graduate from labor solidarity to being an actual union member (in the Steelworkers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW). I was very proud that my IBEW local passed a resolution calling for Martin Luther King’s birthday to be made a national holiday (this was back before it was). In this little bio I’m trying to stick to religion and politics, but I should mention that it was during these years that I met the love of my life, and to be honest I’m not at all sure how much the rest of this really matters compare to that. But life does not stop simply because one has found one’s true love. Quite the opposite.
Now, where was I? Oh, eventually I went back to school and got my PhD in Theoretical Physical Chemistry (focussing on chaos theory and non-linear systems). And then I went on to do a post-doc in protein x-ray crystallography. I managed to stay involved in things like abortion rights, the anti-nuclear power movement, and opposition to the first Gulf War. Then one fine day it dawned on me that as part of my training and work as a scientist I had learned quite a lot about computers. I also learned that being a Unix System Adminstrator paid, easily, twice as much as being a post-doc. And at this time in human history, if you could spell “Unix” you could become a Unix System Administrator. So I followed the money.
From 2004 on I maintained my political sympathies, but focussed my energies on the Dharma. As a teacher I have tried to avoid misusing whatever little “authority” I might have to promote my own political beliefs. I am well aware of the fact that Buddhists come in all political flavors, and I consider it my responsibility to embrace all my fellow practitioners as friends in the Dharma, regardless of their political views, or lack thereof. I always cringe when other teachers make a point of promoting their own political agenda. Of course these teachers inevitably claim that their political agenda somehow isn’t really “political”, rather they insist that their favorite political causes are “moral” issues that are thereby, somehow, “above politics” or something like that. I consider that to be semantic quibbling, at best. Of course one’s political beliefs are based on one’s moral beliefs. Where else could political beliefs come from? But if one acts on the basis of one’s beliefs, then that action is, necessarily, political.
The same thing holds true for the claim that Israel is a “colonial settler state”, or that Israel is an “apartheid regime”. These are all political slogans, and very dubious ones at that. Not only are they political slogans, but they are the political slogans of the enemies of Israel: Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. I am not an enemy of Israel. In point of fact I strongly support Israel. I am a Zionist.
Buddhists should oppose antisemitism. Duh. But what is antisemitism?