SETH MANDEL: Purging Jews From the Arts.

Sally Rooney is a clarifying figure in the literary world. She does not go for complexity or nuance, and she doesn’t like to leave herself open to interpretation. Rooney has now written the same novel four times, likely to avoid any possible confusion over what it is she wants to say. And rather than hide behind some disingenuous claim of “just anti-Zionism,” she does things like oppose her last novel’s translation into Hebrew, an act of overt hostility to Jews and only Jews.

So it’s no surprise to find Rooney’s name atop a McCarthyite attempt to purge the arts of the People of the Book. What’s more interesting is to see who else jumps on Rooney’s straight-talk express and whether the wider societal reaction reaches a fraction of what it ought to be.

Hundreds of writers have joined what is framed as a boycott but is actually the institution of a global loyalty oath for Jews. The novelist Rachel Kushner, whose new book contains a rather creepy rant aimed at French Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, is one of the more famous of Rooney’s inquisitors. Junot Diaz, like a once-famous emo act reuniting for a Gen X nostalgia tour, is on there as well.

Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher novels, is not on there. He objected to the purge, as did Lionel Shriver and Howard Jacobson. The crux of the loyalty test is as follows:

“We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

“A) Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or

“B) Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.”

You are to be unpersoned, that is, if you write about Israel without denouncing the Jewish state—a rule that is intended to disqualify Jewish writers of any and every nationality—or if you are Israeli and have not renounced your country and your people, like any Good Jew apparently would. Israelis are currently under fire from seven fronts in a war that began with an explicitly genocidal invasion by Iranian proxies, and if you do not do something to help the cause of exterminating your own people, you are heretofore banished from the arts.

I’m not sure it’s possible to top the reaction from the poet Gillian Lazarus, who said:

“The likes of Sally Rooney would boycott the likes of Amos Oz, David Grossman and Yehuda Amichai. It’s as if a composer of advertising jingles boycotted Mozart.”

The writer of the liner notes for Roger Waters’ next album just identified herself, though.

At the Free Press, Lionel Shriver adds “Count me out” of “Sally Rooney’s Literary Mob:” “Although some say we’ve passed peak woke, the modern left’s authoritarian impulse to push other people around is alive and well. It’s just that a memo must have gone out to the faithful that the agenda has switched, and now instead of black lives mattering or the climate changing, they’re all to lose their wits over Israel and stick it to the Jews. These are very obedient disciples.”