From the Blacklist to the Ghost List

Miriam Libicki • Age 43 // Graphic novelist, Vancouver, Canada

In April of 2024, I exhibited at Van- CAF, a local comics festival, where I had tabled for a dozen years. Some “activists” researched me and complained to organizers that as an IDF veteran I represented a “public safety hazard,” even though I served 23 years ago and had nothing Israel-related on my table. In the days after the festival, an online troll campaign denounced me and the festival.

A week later, VanCAF made a public post on Instagram identifying me, apologizing to the public for letting me exhibit, and promising I would now be banned for life.

After a media outcry and after I retained the services of a human rights lawyer, they later removed the post and apologized.

Yet this notorious incident was actually a very non-confrontational blacklisting. It mostly happened online. And though it seemed like things were resolved, my regular teaching offers all dried up. This year I have seen the least amount of work in a decade. I feel that people decided that they’re going to do something to prevent the slaughter of civilians by hurting people in their own community.

Today, cultural boycotts like this are happening locally, to people like me who are established in communities; my whole professional art career has been in Canada, and never in Israel. That’s the part that is really hurtful. Who benefits when these scholarly and literary and artistic communities engage in purges?

And there’s a lot of assuming. You don’t know what someone’s political position is, just because they happen to be Jewish or because they have some connection to Israel. I’m feeling it this year more than before—that people are making assumptions. For instance, I have these lefty non-Jewish friendly acquaintances I thought knew me fairly well, and that are just ghosting away.

It did give me comfort that people did speak out for me—when the bad thing happened, I got very little direct hate and a lot of direct support. The support has been vocal, but it seems like the suspicion might still be around. When reputational damage happens—well, let’s just say the support I got didn’t convince me that there was no problem. If we want a strong community we have to build across differences.