Saturday, June 08, 2024

Miriam Libicki still retains her far-left positions

I'd noted before that the comics artist Libicki, whom VanCAF had to apologize to for nearly banning from their convention, was far-left, and in the following news from Stir, it appears she's still sticking by her positions that're damaging to Israel, regrettably enough, while promoting another GN she's been working on:
Following the incident, the American-Israeli graphic novelist is using her heightened profile to raise funds for The Mother’s Call, a collaboration of women peace advocates in Palestine and Israel.
Well if this is correct, she - and the magazine - are continuing the notion of legitimizing the fabrication of an Arab/Islamic state called "Palestine", and quite possibly not acknowledging that it's a name the Roman empire gave to the land to belittle it. So, while what VanCAF did was offensive, how beyond this can I really care about Libicki if she's not going to reevaluate her politics and whether it's healthy to take up such ideologies to begin with?
In a phone call with Stir, Libicki explained that she had exhibited at every Vancouver Comic Arts Festival since 2012 until 2022, when two members of the public confronted festival volunteers about her inclusion. “There was no confrontation at my table, but they complained to the show in a very hostile and discomforting manner,” she recalled. “They were complaining that I was a Zionist and it was Zionist propaganda, and I shouldn’t be allowed to exhibit at the show.” Libicki said she was told that the pair would be banned from attending the festival in the future.
On this, a vital point must be made there's antisemites out there who don't give a damn how far-left a person of Israeli descent could lean; they'll consider them scum anyway. That said, people like Libicki most likely don't respect the meaning of "zion", which is simply a synonym for Israel, and even nationalism/patriotism. Interesting how the 2 people spoken of aren't identified clearly. Were they Moslems obsessed with antisemitic viewpoints? If Stir omitted any details themselves, that's wrong, but if Libicki did too, that's also troubling.
In 2023, Libicki said, she missed the initial call for applications, and was turned down for an exhibition table by organizers who said they needed to review the previous year’s incident. This year, Libicki said organizers initially refused her a table, but finally agreed that she could attend if she exhibited only But I Live. “I was okay with that because I do know that this year things are different,” she said.
And what does that mean? That her GN about army service is taboo? Well that too is wrong, because it's also a form of censorship. If she or anybody else wanted to publish and exhibit a GN about Islamic terrorism, all of a sudden, just like that, the subject is completely off limits in virtually every way? There's at least a few GNs from past years since 9-11 like Frank Miller's Holy Terror that're doubtless banned from these festivals, and it won't be a shock if openly right-wing writers are too. For all we know, Will Eisner's last GN, The Plot, will doubtless never be exhibited or spoken about at VanCAF so long as they keep this up, and if Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were still alive and said even one single word considered Wrongthink, they'd be banned too. Something tells me Libicki won't stand up for such folks either.
According to Libicki, this year’s show went without incident until half an hour before its closing, when she was approached by two people who began asking her questions about her work and her background. “They had the briefest interaction with me at my table…and then they enacted basically the exact same scene [as 2022] to volunteers and VanCAF staff and Roundhouse staff,” she said. “It was not a confrontation with me.”

Libicki said that she had no contact with VanCAF before the organization posted its “accountability statement” days later. “They never told us formally that there was a complaint against me. They never told me that I was banned before that announcement went up.”

Libicki said all her communications with VanCAF since May 25 have been through her lawyer: “When they took down the statement on Wednesday [May 29], that was after my lawyer sent them a letter. And when they put up the apology, they did run it by my lawyer first….The apology did not get any more personal to me than that.”
I get it, the attack came from behind the back (or more specifically, the scenes), which is surely even more cowardly. But anybody who thinks Libicki is worth supporting from a common sense perspective would do well to ponder the following, where she puts more of her leftism on display:
Libicki said she is now speaking out not just for herself, but to stand up for other individuals who may find themselves in similar crosshairs. “This could happen to anybody with some sort of identity that is politicized or politically marginalized,” she said. “It means that if somebody else decides your identity is a political problem, then we’re going to ban you instead of them. That could easily apply to, you know, a Palestinian person. It could have been a right-wing pro-Zionist activist who complained about a Palestinian person being there, and created a disturbance. Or, you know, famously in the U.S. and in our country, things like drag queen story hour—trans people and drag performers existing is a political problem for some people. So then they are called a safety hazard, when it's actually not them that is a safety hazard, it’s the people who decided that their identity is a political problem.”

Libicki said she has decided to use the attention the situation has brought her to raise money for peace activists in Israel and Palestine. She is selling a series of five watercolour artworks of seahorses, and will donate 100 percent of the proceeds to The Mothers’ Call, a grassroots collaboration between Women of The Sun in Palestine and Women Wage Peace in Israel.

“What I stand for is peace and justice, and that Israel and Palestine belongs to everyone who lives there, of all religions and backgrounds,” she said. “Maybe with all the added attention, maybe some of the pieces will sell, and I would then be able to send on the money, and it could be a good outcome.”
Wow, this is exactly what led to the October 7, 2023 massacre and the 2015 Bataclan bloodbath in the first place, to say nothing of moral equivalence espoused by somebody who clearly doesn't have the courage to discuss what the Islamic koran/hadith contain about Jews and anybody else considered an "infidel". Also intriguing is how she implies "right-wing pro-Zionist activists" are troublemakers, but not "Palestinians"? Regrettably, it appears she's sticking tight to her left-wing ideologies, right down to how she even drags the drag-queen and transsexual ideologies into this whole mess, and it strongly hints she doesn't have much respect for parents who find it all a horrible influence. Even the part about "peace and justice" is ambiguous, because if the Islamic religion advocates jihadism (religious/holy war), how can you just talk about peace so superficially? Does Libicki even believe in justice for Armenians, considering the tragedy they suffered at the hands of the Islamic Ottoman empire during WW1, and are still suffering now via Azerbaijan? Would she even work with 911 Families to develop a GN about their experiences and what led to the tragedy of the World Trade Center in 2001? Regrettably, if her viewpoints are any indication, chances of that are very slim.
In addition to raising money for The Mothers’ Call, Libicki is hoping that other organizations can learn from what she went through. “I do feel like what happened at VanCAF is something that could be a warning to other arts festivals about not losing their heads when somebody who they might happen to politically agree with has a bullying campaign against them,” she said. “There was a campaign in the week between the festival and when they put out that statement, where they were just being dogpiled by certain people, who were not a lot of people, but were just very loud. And then it was the added temptation of the fact that many of their politics, the people on the board happened to agree with. They couldn’t see that this was bullying tactics, and that the people who were calling for them to do things that were wrong and unfair and illegal. I think that's something that can happen and possibly has and is happening to other arts festivals and nonprofits. And so they should look at VanCAF as an object lesson in what not to do and why not to do it.”
Well is she and/or the festival going to support and invite any conservative/right-wing artists and writers in the future? Unfortunately, I have a sad feeling that won't be the case at all. What VanCAF did was wrong. But beyond that, any support I can offer Libicki will have to stop right then and there, because it's clear she's not willing to reevaluate her ultra-leftist standings, and is continuing with uninformed, narrow visions that have done more harm than good for Israel and other places in danger of Islamofascism. I just hope she's glad some more Israeli hostages have been rescued from Hamas captivity in Gaza. Yet if Libicki's rhetoric is any indication, she won't do any projects with hostages rescued from Islamic jihadists any more than she'd be willing to work with 911 Families and Bataclan survivors in France.

4 hostages rescued in Gaza

Some very fortunate news has just come up, as at least 4 hostages were rescued from the Gaza area:
On Saturday morning, in a joint IDF, ISA and Israel Police (Yamam) complex, special, daytime operation in Nuseirat, four Israeli hostages were rescued.

Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40), were kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organization from the 'Nova' music festival on October 7th.

The hostages were rescued by the IDF, ISA and Yamam counterterrorism forces from two separate locations in the heart of Nuseirat
.

They are in good medical condition and have been transferred to the Sheba Tel-Hashomer Medical Center for further medical examinations.

"The security forces will continue to make every effort to bring the hostages home," the statement stressed.
Thank goodness and the Lord for bringing about this rescue. Now, let's hope others will turn up alive and be saved from captivity as well.

Update: more information to consider:
Argamani, has been one of the most widely recognized hostages since she was abducted from a music festival in southern Israel. The video of her abduction was among the first to surface, images of her horrified face widely shared — Argamani detained between two men on a motorcycle, one arm outstretched and the other held down as she screams “Don’t kill me!”

Her mother, Liora, has stage four brain cancer and in April released a video pleading to see her daughter before she dies.
Let's hope that now, she can see her daughter and have a good reunion.

VanCAF apologizes to artist Miriam Libicki for blacklisting her over her Israeli army service

A few days after the disgusting news that the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival in Canada banned artist Miriam Libicki over her service in the Israeli army, her left-wing positions notwithstanding, the Times of Israel/JTA now reports the convention's apologized for their abominable behavior, which did as much a disfavor to WW2 Holocaust and 9-11 victims as it did to victims of the Hamas on October 7, 2023:
A Vancouver comics festival apologized to a Jewish artist it had banned over her past Israeli military service and a Seattle museum announced it was recommitting to an exhibit on antisemitism that prompted a staff walkout, in two reversals of North American arts-world sanctions connected to the Israel-Hamas war.

Both the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival in Canada and the Wing Luke Museum in the United States had faced significant backlash over the actions they took because of pro-Palestinian activism.

“VanCAF has lost and continues to lose the trust of many we have sought to serve,”
the Vancouver festival said in a social media apology late Sunday, days after announcing that it was banning American-Israeli comics artist Miriam Libicki following activist complaints over her past IDF service.

The festival didn’t name Libicki in either its initial statement banning her — which it quickly removed from social media following backlash — or its lengthy new apology. But the ban referenced Libicki’s previous IDF service, which she has turned into a comic, while the apology referenced another specific work of hers: “But I Live,” a collaboration with Holocaust survivors.

After criticism from both Libicki and leaders of major Canadian Jewish institutions, VanCAF said in its apology that “the vast majority” of people involved in the ban have resigned from its board. The group said it was entering a new “transition period” as a result of the fallout, and added that it has no full-time staff and it is entirely volunteer-run.
Those who left the convention's board are no loss, and do not belong in the entertainment business in any way, shape or form. Yet even now, much like Bud Light's transsexual scandal a few years ago, maybe anybody planning to boycott VanCAF should continue to do so, and definitely sit out this year's festival, which, for all we know, could end up being the last, if sponsors wise up and pull funding for them.
“Conflating the political with the practical safety of those attending our festival was the wrong stance to take,” the apology noted. VanCAF said it had issued the ban as a result of safety concerns after deeming that pro-Palestinian backlash to Libicki’s presence at its last two festivals had created a “volatile atmosphere.”

(A synagogue in Vancouver was targeted in an arson attack last week, elevating alarm after shooting attacks on Jewish sites in Toronto and Montreal. Authorities in Vancouver are investigating the arson as a hate crime.)

VanCAF is one of a growing number of arts institutions to face turmoil over the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, which has left some Jews feeling uncertain about their place in the arts world.

In Seattle, the Wing Luke Museum, an Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander heritage museum in Chinatown, will move forward with an exhibition on how the region’s Asian, Jewish and Black communities have all jointly responded to hate. The announcement came days after several museum staffers walked off the job, objecting to what they said were “Zionist perspectives” in the exhibit; the museum had temporarily shuttered following the walkout.

“We remain committed to the exhibit’s core message of confronting hate,” the museum said in a joint statement with the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, an exhibit partner, and the Black Heritage Society. “We acknowledge the complexity of this deeply challenging work. We understand that the bigotry, bias, and racism that affects our communities goes well beyond us to touch many. Though recent events have caused significant harm, we are undeterred.”

The three groups also said they would make some unspecified changes to the content, “offering additional framing on its genesis, the initial public reaction, and the history of our communities working together” before the exhibit reopens June 30. Staff had objected to some of the exhibit’s descriptions of modern-day antisemitism, including the inclusion of campus protests over October 7, and had demanded that the museum make changes including acknowledging a lack of Palestinian perspectives. The exhibit had been in the works since before October 7.
If the aforementioned pro-palestinians who caused a ruckus were to antagonize early comics contributors like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (one of whom was Canadian-born), were they still alive today, would that sit well with VanCAF's management, which committed an act of cowardice if the above news is correct? What they should really be doing is hiring security to keep out any and all of these obsessed troublemakers, and should be vetting all workers they hire to make sure they're not obsessed with censoring anything positive in regards to Israel, and/or censoring any objective and critical view of Islam. There's a cartoonist named Bosch Fawstin, who's a former Muslim from regions like Albania, who's bravely criticized the Religion of Peace which he left, and people like him, tragically, are blacklisted by these pretentious festivals. All this cowardly panic is not helping to defeat jihadism at all, and the failure to seriously confront issues like Islamic terrorism have the effect of making movies and comics about the Holocaust look like a joke. If modern showbiz writers won't confront a modern issue, how can we believe they really care about a past one? Also consider issues like the Korean and Vietnam wars practically vanished from entertainment nearly 3 decades ago, are rarely discussed since, and WW1-related issues like the Armenian Genocide by Turkey's Islamic Ottoman empire, are also banned from study, in film, comics and other mediums in the west. This is exactly why the war against terrorism's been lost for many years.

For now, it remains to be seen if the "unspecified changes" the aforementioned groups announced they'd make will be honest ones. And if they continue to tiptoe around serious issues, they've effectively failed their mission, and VanCAF should continue to be boycotted to boot.