Six months after October 7th, 2023, I sat with an acclaimed Israeli author in Tel Aviv. Her books had been translated into English and sold in bookstores across the United States for years, including her latest.
In spite of this success, she shared that her publisher told her there wasn’t a single bookstore in New York City willing to host her for a reading.
I wish her experience were rare, but it isn’t. Around the world, Israeli comedians and performers are losing shows over vague “security concerns,” filmmakers are being pulled from festival lineups, and successful authors are learning their international publishers have suddenly lost interest in whatever they write next.
Some institutions will say they're simply managing risk. But when the same 'risk' only ever applies to Israeli artists, it isn't caution. It's exclusion.
One dot on a page, on its own, means nothing. Plot enough of them, and a trendline emerges that can't be waved away as coincidence.
We set out to document these trends, with a new initiative assessing 40 of some of the United States’ most well-known art museums and examining antisemitism within the literary and entertainment worlds. Our findings should trouble anyone who cares about arts and culture, not just the Israeli and Jewish communities.
Ask any novelist or comedian who has ever softened a line out of fear, and they will recognize exactly what’s at stake. A culture willing to quietly edit out one group over its identity will eventually find reason to edit out another.
Of the 40 American museums we evaluated, only one earned the highest rating possible in our assessment. Twelve landed in the lowest category. Not a single museum names Jewish identity in its diversity and inclusion policies. Many have not hosted dedicated Israeli exhibits, despite having works by Israeli artists in their collections.
In publishing, we identified seven distinct anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli trends, from suppressing Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist themes to coordinating review bombing campaigns. In the performing arts, we documented dozens of cases across 41 U.S. cities where Jewish, Israeli, or openly Zionist performers were harassed, disrupted, or canceled.
None of this reflects what the American public wants. We found that 77 percent of U.S. survey respondents would visit an art gallery exhibiting work by Israeli artists, 75 percent would attend a performance featuring Israeli performers, and 73 percent would still buy a book that interested them even if they knew it included Israeli topics or characters.
The audience isn't the problem. Institutions are “playing it safe” at the expense of the audiences they depend on — and at the expense of the artists.
To ensure Israeli artists aren’t left behind, we’re pushing forward on three fronts. First, we’re documenting trends, so quiet exclusion can’t hide behind vague explanations.
Second, we're educating the industry, because the assumption driving many of these decisions – that audiences don't want Israeli artists – is one the data flatly contradicts.
Finally, we’re directly advocating with museums, publishers, and cultural institutions in the United States. We must press them to explicitly prohibit antisemitism through their own policies, resist pressure campaigns aimed at silencing one group, and trust the audiences who have already told us what they want.
That Israeli author I sat with over two years ago deserved a bookstore willing to host her in New York, and so does the next artist facing the same scenario. We intend to make sure Israeli artists are accepted by not only bookstores, museums, and theaters, but by the rest of the world.
Written in collaboration with the ADL