The 92nd Street Y — the Jewish answer to the Christians’ YMCA — runs a celebrated Speakers’ Series, where writers, poets, and critics appear, to read from or discuss their work, or to speak on any topic they so desire. Recently several of those invited to speak have shown themselves to be moral idiots, in supporting Hamas and accusing Israel of “genocide.” One of the speakers, Viet Thanh Nguyen, had his appearance “postponed,” which I trust will turn into “cancelled.” Three people who were scheduled to speak later on have now withdrawn from those appearances. Two employees of the 92nd Street Y have also resigned, in solidarity with the anti-Israel brigade. More on this telling contretemps can be found here: “Major New York Center Pauses Literary Series After Backlash for Pulling Event With Author Who Slammed Israel,” by Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, October 24, 2023:
New York City’s cultural and community center known as 92NY announced on Monday that it was putting a pause on its literary reading series after facing criticism for canceling an event with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, who has lambasted Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing war between the Jewish state and Hamas.
On Friday, 92NY, formerly known as the 92nd Street Y, called off an event set to take place at the center that night with Nguyen, who is also a New York Times contributing opinion writer. He was scheduled to discuss his memoir, A Man of Two Faces, at a gathering organized by 92NY’s Unterberg Poetry Center. The event was instead moved to a bookstore in downtown Manhattan and organized by Bernard Schwartz, the poetry center’s executive director. Nguyen confirmed the news on Instagram.
Earlier that week, Nguyen joined 750 writers and artists in signing an open letter condemning Israel’s “unprecedented and indiscriminate violence” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the country’s “grave crimes against humanity.” The letter further accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” genocide, and the “occupation of Palestine.” — Nguyen, who is also author of The Sympathizer and writer for the HBO series based on the novel, shared text from the open letter in an Instagram post on Thursday and reiterated his support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel….
Those 750 writers and artists who signed that atrocious anti-Israel screed have in their open letter made fools of themselves. They write of Israel’s “unprecedented and indiscriminate violence.” It is Hamas, not Israel, that has shown itself guilty of “unprecedented and indiscriminate violence” in its attack on October 7, when its fanatical hate-filled killers decapitated or burned alive babies and chidren, raped and murdered young girls, slaughtered grandmothers, and tortured — gouging out eyes, cutting off tongues — Israeli soldiers before killing them and savagely mutilating their bodies. That was the violence visited on Israelis by Palestinians.
Now the IDF, quite rightly, is trying to destroy Hamas as a military force. It is doing the best it can to minimize civilian deaths, while recognizing that the hellish conditions in Gaza make that task very difficult. Hamas has hidden tens of thousands of rockets and other weapons, rocket launchers, command-and-control centers, low-level operatives and commanders, close to, or even inside, schools, mosques, hospitals, and apartment buildings, using civilians as hostages to prevent Israeli attacks.
Hamas’ goal is always to maximize civilian casualties, Israel’s goal is always to minimize them. The IDF tries to warn civilians away from sites It is about to target; it does this by messaging, telephoning, leafletting, and by making use of the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. The IDF has also tried, for nearly two weeks, to persuade people in the north of Gaza to move south, telling them that during the invasion no place in the north will be safe. At least 750,000 of the one million people in the north have now moved south; the rest are likely to stay put, not least because many of them are being prevented by Hamas from leaving. Israeli pilots have been known to call off attacks if they sense there are too many civilians in the targeted area. Does Viet Nguyen know about how the IDF tries so hard to save civilian lives? And If he did, would he care, or does his anti-Israel animus blind him to that reality?
In 2020, Nguyen penned a 2,000-word essay for the New York Times in which he condemned “Israeli settler colonialism.” He said on Sunday in an Instagram post, “I have no regrets about anything I have said or done in regards to Palestine, Israel, or the occupation and war.”
Had the 92nd St. Y been aware of Nguyen’s unhinged anti-Israel article that appeared in the Times in 2020, it could have saved itself from having to cancel him; it would never have invited him in the first place.
A number of writers have since announced their decision to cancel upcoming scheduled appearances at the 92NY “in solidarity” with Nguyen. Critics Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, and novelist Dionne Brand all backed out of an event on Wednesday. Poet Paisley Rekdal and critic Andrea Long Chu announced separately their decisions to do the same regarding other upcoming events. In a series of posts on X/Twitter, Chu accused 92NY of being a “pro-war nonprofit” that has “endorsed genocide” for siding with Israel, and also alleged that Israel was practicing apartheid.
How appalling that five people have pulled out of participating in 92nd Street Y events in “solidarity” with Nguyen. It’s their loss — loss of exposure to a large and intelligent audience, loss of a generous honorarium, and potentially, loss of future appearances, not just at the Y but also elsewhere, when organizers of those events take note of their anti-Israel animus and decide that they don’t want to help promote people displaying such insensate hostility to Israel.
Sarah Chihaya, the poetry center’s director, and Sophie Herron, the senior program coordinator, also resigned, according to the New York Times. On Monday afternoon, 92NY said that the 2023-24 literary series was “on pause given recent staff resignations.”
Good riddance to both. Remember, these are people who are resigning In solidarity with Viet Thanh Nguyen. who has signed a letter that accuses Israel of “unprecedented and indiscriminate violence” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and further condemns Israel for what the signatories, including Nguyen, describe as its “grave crimes against humanity.” The letter further accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” and the “occupation of Palestine.”
Nguyen has been at this anti-Israel business for several years, long before Israel was bombing Hamas sites in Gaza as it is today. His New York Times essay on Israel included his exhorting his fellow writers to “denounce Israeli settler colonialism and speak out for the Palestinian people.” He then asked “what will 2021 bring forth from the literary world?” And he answers: “Hopefully more poems like Noor Hindi’s 2020 clarion call ‘F**k Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying,’ which simultaneously attacks M.F.A. culture and crosses the brightest red line in American politics: Palestine.” Nguyen falsely writes in that essay that “the only Americans — many of Palestinian descent — getting canceled by being fired, denied tenure or threatened with lawsuits are the ones who denounce Israeli settler colonialism and speak out for the Palestinian people.” Actually, at the New York Times opinion page, it’s the Zionists who are getting canceled, and the anti-Zionists who are getting promoted. Finally, Nguyen writes that “the United States, as a settler colonial society that disavows its settler colonial origins and present, sees a like-minded ally in Israel.” That’s nonsense. The “colonial” powers in the land that is now Israel included the Ottoman Empire and the British; Jews have lived there for more than 3000 years, 1600 years before the first Muslim Arab appeared in the Land of Israel.
Viet Nguyen is clearly obsessed with Israel, and unhinged by his hate. For only someone consumed with antisemitic hate could accuse Israel so incessantly with “genocide.” It’s enough to note, by way of refutation, that the Arab population of Gaza in 1967 was 400,000; now it is more than two million. In 1967 the Palestinian population in the West Bank was 900,000; now it is 3.2 million.
Genocide? What genocide?
Now I have only one question: Will HBO do the right thing, and cancel this unhinged bigot’s program? Let’s hope.
bagsgroove says
Send viet nguyen back to Vietnam.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Actually, to my surprise, Israel and Vietnam have always had good relations. In fact, Ho Chi Minh once offered David Ben Gurion an alternative Jewish homeland in Vietnam in 1946
Viet Nguyen is more influenced by the Left in this country, than anything in his country of origin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Vietnam_relations
JANET says
By all means JUST GET RID OF HIM !
carpediadem says
Ewwwwwwww, Andrea Long Chu was invited? What a grotesque individual, definitely no loss there.