The post was a beautifully written first-person account of Joanna Chen, who found herself caught after October 7th between the reality of the atrocities of that day and her concerns for her friends and Palestinians in Gaza. It was poignant.
The horrors that had been perpetrated rose to the surface of my consciousness at these times. I listened to interviews with survivors; I watched videos of atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel and reports about the rising number of innocent civilians killed in a devastated Gaza.
There is a limit to which the human soul can stomach atrocities and keep going. On the other hand, turning away from distressing footage taken by Hamas terrorists, by surveillance cameras, and by people running for their lives or sheltering from missiles meant turning away from their pain. I couldn’t do it.
It was also too incorrect for many of the staff at the journal Guernica.
Although Guernica proclaims that it is “a home for singular voices, incisive ideas, and critical questions,” this essay apparently crossed the line. The article has been removed from the journal’s website. In its place reads the message: “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.”
[Update: It appears the article was de-published after multiple members of Guernica‘s all-volunteer staff resigned over the decision to publish the essay. For explanations of why some editorial and other staff felt they had to resign, see here, here, here, and here.]
It wasn’t that Chen’s post was pro-Israel or anti-Palestine, but that it wasn’t anti-Israel or Pro-Palestine. And that was the only perspective the staff of Guernica could, would tolerate. Chen’s post was unpublished.
https://twitter.com/Chicks_Balances/status/1766830884726952309
https://twitter.com/chelsea_risley/status/1766858710142394410
on my resignation from guernica magazine pic.twitter.com/JDU6Jw4bb3
— April Zhu 朱萸 (@aprzhu) March 10, 2024
I resign as Fiction Editor at Guernica pic.twitter.com/8CSPOOjiF0
— Ishita Marwah (@IshitaMarwah) March 10, 2024
It’s not as if Guernica is an influential magazine in the real world of politics, although I’m sure it matters to some. It’s not as if these volunteer staffers aren’t entitled to quit for any reason or no reason. They are. But what does matter is that Guernica laid claim to “producing uncompromising journalism,” which is now revealed as a complete sham.
A current fundraising appeal on the Guernica website declares: “At Guernica, we’ve spent the last 15 years producing uncompromising journalism.” After de-publishing the essay, that appeal may need to be taken down too.
Aside from new media, there are two general type of focused media: That which claims to be open-ended, publishing all perspectives on a specific subject and that which is openly directed toward one perspective only. There is nothing wrong with publishing a biased perspective, provided you don’t try to pass it off as being unbiased. Think of an MSNBC panel discussion that ranges from “Biden is a good president” to “I want to have Biden’s babies.” The same is true in the opposite direction.
But somebody at Guernica believed in the journal’s claim to producing “uncompromising journalism,” and made the editorial decision to publish Chen’s essay. It was, to my eye, a wonderful piece of writing and, again to my eye, hardly controversial. It was not a screed against Hamas, or a glorification of Israeli tactics in Gaza, but an empathetic personal view from the ground after October 7th from a person who cared about Palestinians as well as Israelis.
And that was enough to so outrage the uncompromising political correctness of some of Guerica’s staff that they resigned rather than be associated with a journal that would post something so well-written, so fair-minded, so honest that didn’t hate who they demanded the author hate. That’s the state of tolerance to which we’ve awoken.
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Another publication cheapens itself to a simple propaganda rag. It’s been happening a lot.
Wow, very disturbing. What has affected me most after 10-7 is the feeling that some people now think in a way that I can’t comprehend. Like, I get how some people could take the side of the Palestinians or urge restraint on Israel, etc. etc. I don’t agree but I understand the argument. But then when you see people angrily tearing down posters of children who were taken hostage, I have no idea even where they’re coming from. This Guernica article was beautifully written but it was also in the most balanced way imaginable. The person who responds to it by saying, “its beyond the pale” – I don’t even recognize the mode of thinking. It’s like if someone started telling you that actually two plus two doesn’t equal 4 or they don’t believe in gravity anymore or something. I’m losing the sense that we – at least in the West – all have a common way of logic and thinking about things, even if we disagree.
This “foam-at-the mouth” way of thinking used to be confined to a very small segment of the academic community. But we let the camel get his nose under the tent.
Guernica is better off without them. They are whiners from afar without any skin in the game.
At first I was skeptical of Chen when she wrote, “I limited my intake of the news and joined a number of solidarity groups, Zoom meetings in which people shared their dismay and shock. ” But she was only at a waystation on the road to embracing her aunt’s legacy and actively trying to make her corner of this strange universe a saner and gentler place.
For what little my opinion is worth, Bravo!
I appreciate the above two grounded, sane comments which, both short and long, eventually summarize most of my thoughts when I first read about the multiple resignations from Guernica. I was all over the map with how to post here. I wanted to try humor; then I thought I might go for some angry name-calling; I thought I would try constructing some acrostics (Heinous Atrocities Made Acceptable, Somehow; but g-u-e-r-n-i-c-a and p-i-c-a-s-s-o were harder). Then, more seriously, I thought of the ever growing (i.e., # pages) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and I thought, well, if ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) is in the lexicon, then the next DSM version will surely add ADJD or some-such thing (attention deficit journalistic disorder). Semi-seriously, I begin to wonder if five months ago=October 7 is a historical day so distanced into the past for these GR (guernica resigners) that they can’t deal with it as anything more than a partisan legend, a partly-fictionalized Zionistic trope. Gawd help ’em. Seriously, they need help. Reminds me of a song: The English Beat/Mirror in the Bathroom “…drift gently into mental illness….”
“Guernica is better off without them.”
Agreed, but I just assumed they were in the process of being lured back.
I just loved the line “A more fulsome explanation will follow.” I think one of the obviously highly educated staffers heard the word “fulsome” and just guessed that it meant “full, and then some.” Either that, or they really do intend to write an explanation of how well-written and generally amazing the original post was, which was why they had to take it down.
If you are going to use big words to attempt to show off your erudition, be certain you actually know what they mean. Just a suggestion.