Took a brief detour today to read “Genocide Bad” by Sim Kern. I don’t feel like this warrants a full analysis; I was debating even reading it because the title alone is childish and off-putting, but I see it recommended a lot, and it’s a very quick read. I meant for this to be shorter, but I had a lot to say; I think their writing is reflective of the average American who gets their news from social media, and that made it a very different read from academic texts. There’s a lot to be angry at in here, but also a lot to laugh at.
- Sim Kern describes themself as “Jewish in a secular, patrilineal, fun-holidays-only kind of way”. They are a middle school teacher, YA author, and self-described “influencer” and “Booktoker.” The book is written with about the level of maturity you would expect from someone who spends all of their time either on social media or around thirteen year-olds; chapter one ends: “If we can free Palestine, we can save the world, and if we can’t free Palestine, we’re all fucked!” This is the general tone of the book.
- They vehemently deny being a self-hating Jew, and I don’t like using that phrasing, but what was very clear is that — while they might not hate themself, they do hate Judaism. “The Book of Joshua is morally repulsive to me. Many of the commandments G-d gives to Moses are morally repulsive to me. The G-d of the Torah’s genocidal plans is morally repulsive to me. And Abraham, the first Jew, is morally repulsive to me…. I’m too horrified by the foundational text of Judaism, on its face, to want to spend my precious life grappling with its hidden meanings. Not when there are so many other books to read!” Your ancestors, for thousands of years, risked their lives to pass these traditions on to you, and you now have the privilege to turn your nose up at them. I’m reminded of the Wicked child at the Seder.
- The other media that they consume seems to primarily consist of the Hunger Games, which is very inappropriately used as a framing device for Israel/Palestine for the better part of a chapter, and Star Wars, where Yahya Sinwar is inexplicably and heroically compared to Obi War Kenobi. I actually felt so embarrassed for them reading this. They want to be Katniss Everdeen so badly.
- I have this theory, that a lot of grade school teachers think they know everything, and everyone is eagerly waiting to hear their great knowledge, because their job is to talk at length in front of very small people who have everything to learn. And this isn’t inherently a bad thing; I’m very grateful for teachers everywhere. However, sometimes, in areas where they are not the authority, I think it’s necessary to take a step back and ask “do I actually know what I’m talking about and is my opinion needed?”
- “Even I, a Jew, can’t look at a Star of David without feeling sick to my stomach. I flinch at the sight of it, the same way I flinch at the Confederate Flag. I’ve packed away in the attic all our Judaica, because I can’t stand to look at it anymore. Thanks for that, Israel!…. If it would do Palestinians any good for me to renounce my Jewishness… and cease referring to myself as a Jew, I would do so in a heartbeat.” This is odd. Antizionism has become their primary self-identifier.
- When they talked about the complications they had in labor during the birth of their child, they paused and interrupted to tell us that really, they couldn’t complain, because Gazans had it worse. That’s not a normal way to process the milestones of your life on a different continent. They switched away from their Jewish doctor because they “needed a C-section and [were] too scared to go under the knife of a potential Zionist.” They saw a Jewish family in kippot in their neighborhood and “couldn’t sleep that night for fear of the Jews living across the street.” I think Adam Louis Klein said that what most defined antisemitism to him was obsession, and that comes through in every line of this book; Kern acts deeply unstable and proud of upending their life over nothing.
- When they talked about getting into Harvard, they mentioned that they were probably selected due to a Jewish poem they wrote, because Harvard is controlled by Zionists (considering the writing quality, I kind of wish that were true). The online backlash to their “Palestinian advocacy,” was probably just an Israeli bot farm trying to silence brave truth-speakers. Their YA novel was rejected from major publishers, probably because of Zionists (I’m reminded of Xiran Jay Zhao). They fully endorse Khazar theory in a very uncomfortable, blood-and-soil way, while admitting that they know nothing about genetics, and misrepresent what the Hannibal Directive was. I genuinely don’t know if this is ignorance or malice; they are a terrible researcher and clearly got their sources from social media before bothering to find an article that vaguely supported their claims (Our primary sources for this book are Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye; hilariously, Mamdani’s dad makes an appearance, as does an instagram post).
- This is interesting: “Palestinian Jews, continuing to resist Zionist aggression, might still have some claim to indigeneity. But those who embrace the Mizrahi identity gleefully serve in the IDF… they have become colonizers. And a colonizer is not indigenous.” See, I could take this same argument back a thousand years and say that indigenous Jews who converted to Islam to rule over the Dhimmis became colonizers. Their entire case is that the indigenous people are the good guys and the colonizers are the bad guys, and if you switch loyalty to the wrong side, you’re also one of the bad guys. This is the Star Wars metaphor again! It has nothing to do with the actual people living on the land. They’ve turned an actual war into a fandom war.
- “Indigenous people wouldn’t uproot olive trees. Indigenous people would not have drained the marshlands [for the love of G-d please learn about Roman deforestation and malaria]. Indigenous people wouldn’t have broken up the West Bank into 227 enclaves.” Do you genuinely think that indigenous people are magical elven beings with a special metaphysical connection to the land who always make correct policy decisions? Look at what the indigenous people of Britain have done to their island. We’re using fairytale logic.
- This person is, unfortunately, responsible for Holocaust education in Houston, Texas. They decided to read the Protocols to prepare for this. They pause for a moment to say that the Protocols are a forgery, of course, and not an actual historical text — but that doesn’t really matter because Israel is doing everything in them anyway. They actually recommend reading the Protocols to learn about Zionism. They are outraged and indignant that their Jewish family members have called them antisemitic and cut ties with them.
- What does being Jewish mean to Kern? “Ethnically, I have Ashkenazi ancestry — that fact can’t be changed — but why consider calling myself a Jew? Because I like the pretty lights and fried potatoes of Hanukkah? Because I like to pepper my vocabulary with a little Yiddish, for spice?” They do add in occasional Yiddish words with footnote definitions: “mishpocha is a Yiddish word for family, a term I lovingly use to refer to my followers on social media.” They also helpfully define terms like “fascism” for us: “a fascist government is a capitalist government without the nice window-dressings of neoliberalism.” I feel bad for their students.
- They do some surface level research into the ways that Jews were persecuted in Christian Europe, and tie this to paganism and the witch-hunts. They seem a lot more interested in the pagans than the Jews. They skim over Mizrahi history, and blame the expulsions on Zionists. We neglect the effect that Naziism had on Arab countries at the time. They claim the Dhimmi protected the Jews, who “didn’t have to” (weren’t allowed to) serve in the army, taking the word at its literal meaning and glossing over the centuries of discrimination and humiliation (“This is our land and the Jews are our dogs”). Again, their arguments are based on whether the good or the evil side is acting, rather than the actions themselves. I could say that the Palestinians of Israel are under the special protection of the IDF because they don’t have to serve in the army, but that would be dishonest; we both know that serving in the army is not the primary marker of status in society.
- I’m immensely unimpressed by their persecution complex. They’re scared of Jews because of online backlash to their TikTok account, and imaginary Zionists pulling the strings to harm their YA novelist career. In my actual neighborhood, I’ve seen a synagogue firebombed by antizionists and cannot walk to the store without seeing graffiti calling for violence against Jews; I have known someone who was shot and killed in the street by a man in keffiyeh shouting Free Palestine, and polls in my country find that 50% of Muslims hold antisemitic views, but I’m not going to lose my mind and have a panic attack if I see a woman in hijab on the street, because I thought we all agreed a few years ago that being afraid of people on the basis of their religion and ethnicity is bad, actually. If an Arab man walks up to me and calls me sister, I’m going to talk to him, not run home and hide. It’s a lot harder to be afraid of the people in your community if you take the time to get to know them. That’s part of why I’m reading these books; having read Khalidi and Pappé and whatever the hell this is, I feel a lot less afraid. Antizionism is a house of cards; it is built on lies and therefore fragile. If you’re so afraid of Zionists that you can’t walk past a Jew in the streets, I think that says a lot more about you than the Jews.
- Here’s one of the last pages: “Wouldn’t it be nice, Zionists, to put down the fear and hate?” I don’t know if they’re talking to themself or to the Jews.
- What happens to half the world’s Jews when Palestine is free? Easy answer for Kern: they don’t care. A whole chapter is titled “Debunking Hasbara: ‘Won’t somebody please think of the colonizers?’” Yes. Seven million Jews live there and both Palestinian governments are invested in killing all of them. What happens to the Jews is half of the equation here. Of course, they say, there will be some amount of glorious revolutionary violence, à la 10/7, involved in liberating Palestine, but Palestinians would “probably never” commit a genocide against Jews, because they’re the good guys, and if they committed genocide, then they would be the bad guys. But that “probably” won’t happen, so don’t worry about it.
- As with Pappé, I was curious to see their answer to the question: “what does a free Palestine look like?” The answer is “sounds of winds, waves, and children laughing, no drones, bombardment, gunfire, or screaming.” Sounds nice, if vague. How to we get from here to there? Their proposed idea for a Palestinian future looks like “Israelis giving up the settlements and the homes taken in 1948.” I — that’s it?? 200 pages of arguing that Israel is the greatest, evilest, most genocidal apartheid state there ever was, and the way to fix it is “maybe a two state solution, maybe one, I don’t know; a ceasefire with Hamas, and ending the settlements?” THAT’S ZIONISM! I’m baffled. Those have been mainstream Israeli political positions for decades; that’s entry-level debate material for the conflict. They have a preschool understanding of what’s going on and they wrote a book about it.
- When Israel implements Kern’s revolutionary policies, and Palestine is finally free, we will achieve “a world beyond imperialism and capitalism.” It’s going to be hard, like in Batman, they say, or like in Mad Max, Black Mirror, Wall-E, and the Lorax, but we can do it. “When I say free Palestine, people want to know: what kind of nation state do you have in mind once Israeli apartheid is toppled? But I don’t dream of nation states. Because I’m an anarchist!”
- A lot of this book made me angry, but in the end, I was laughing. I wasn’t reading a political argument, I was reading a YA novel written by a middle school teacher/booktok influencer, using the Gaza war as set dressing for their dystopian hero’s journey. It was deeply inappropriate, insultingly shallow, and everything a YA book should be. I would rather believe that my old friends view the war this way than the alternative. “For now, I remain a small child, cocooned in my parents’ dreams, hopeful for a future where love conquers all.” How American. That’s adorable.
