Genocide Bad
Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda and maps a course towards collective liberation in ten unapologetic essays.
Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda in ten unapologetic essays. Drawing connections between Biblical promises and exploding pagers, medieval dress codes and modern-day apartheid, Kern sketches a sweeping history of imperialism with their characteristic blend of far-ranging research, pop-culture insights, and scathing humor.
Kern, a former teacher, journalist, novelist, and book influencer, gained international recognition as an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in the days after October 7th, 2023. At a time when social media was flooded with “I Stand with Israel” posts, Kern started sharing content encouraging their followers to read Palestinian books, learn Palestinian history, and question Western reporting on Palestine—videos which went viral into tens of millions of views.
Despite facing hate messages, death threats, and exile from the Zionist Jewish community, Kern has remained steadfast in their advocacy over the past year. They’ve posted daily videos on Palestinian, Jewish, and colonial history, and they’ve raised over $500,000 in direct aid for families in Gaza—all while navigating the challenges of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting a newborn. In Genocide Bad, Kern reflects on the life experiences that led them to anti-Zionist activism, while capturing and expanding upon their online educational content.
Kern doesn’t flinch when confronting the horrors of genocides past and present, but there is also tremendous hope contained in these pages—hope that springs from examples of courage and resilience in the face of extreme violence, and from the kinds of resistance that might just lead to our collective liberation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this bracing account, novelist Kern (The Free People's Village) unpacks what they've learned as a prominent online anti-Zionist activist. Kern, who is Jewish, begins by considering how "Israel claims I have some special connection to Palestinian lands. I could move there... and claim... rights that are denied to Indigenous Palestinians." How is it, they wonder, that Americans with no connection to Palestine can be afforded such opportunities, yet Americans respond to "billions of our taxpayer dollars" going to Israel's bombing campaign against Palestine with a collective "what does it have to do with me?" Kern finds one answer in the prevalence on social media of "Hasbara," the "Israeli term for propaganda," aimed primarily at Americans and spread by "bots, committed Zionists, or even salaried employees." Hasbara, Kern writes, works to "confuse" the "basic" historical facts about Israel and silence dissent (one tactic is to draw on pseudo–social justice rhetoric—e.g. calling criticism of Israel "problematic"). Delving into the history of Zionism, Kern argues that it evolved from European colonialism and antisemitism (one Zionist founder, for instance, wrote that "because the Yid is ugly" and "sickly... we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty.... The Yid has accepted submission, and therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command"). It's a bold challenge to accepted American narratives about Israel.
