Why is a Canadian literary magazine supporting ‘armed resistance’?

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David Bezmozgis is a writer and filmmaker. His upcoming film, The Betrayers, will be released in 2026.

On June 1, the Canadian literary magazine, The Ex-Puritan, put out a call for submissions for a special issue entitled “Resistance and Hope,” guest edited by the writer and psychiatrist, Bahar Orang. Framing the issue, which she hopes will be “a creative folio of political education that consolidates ‘Resistance’ as armed struggle against US-led imperialism,” Ms. Orang writes that she deplores “zionist (sic) demand[s] to ‘condemn’ this group or that group” and wishes “to affirm [that] revolutionary violence [...] is a historically accurate, materially grounded, and ethically sound position to hold.”

She takes inspiration, in part, from the Palestinian writer Abdaljawad Omar, who published an essay on Nov. 8, 2023, minimizing the established facts about Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and involved systematic sexual and gender-based violence and the abduction of 251 people into Gaza. In a subsequent interview cited by Ms. Orang, Mr. Omar said that “it stands to reason that if the outright intention had been to indiscriminately kill, the number of Israeli casualties in the initial days would probably have been significantly higher.”

You might ask why you should care about an issue of a literary magazine most Canadians have never heard of. I’d argue that it’s a barometer of where we are as a literary community and as a society more broadly. Ms. Orang’s project rests on a series of moral and political assumptions. That a writer in Canada can pitch an editor on an issue of a magazine whose purpose, at least in part, is to lend intellectual cover for the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, and not be dismissed out of hand. That the editor will believe that approving this issue will not lead to a revolt by the people who work at the magazine or imperil its taxpayer funding. That there will be enough writers in Canada and elsewhere to contribute writing of sufficient quality to make this thing possible. And that, once published, the issue will be received by readers and members of the Canadian literary community as a legitimate endeavour.

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What does it actually mean to affirm revolutionary violence as a historically accurate, materially grounded, and ethically sound position against U.S.-led imperialism? Where? Presumably any place where people opposed to U.S.-led imperialism believe it exists. Explicitly in Israel and Palestine, but other places too. And if there are perceived agents or abettors of U.S.-led imperialism in Canada, should these be included? Zionists, for instance, however one defines them. And if revolutionary violence is ethically sound, why stop at validating it with your art, why not do it yourself?

What sort of world and what sort of Canada do Ms. Orang and the editors of The Ex-Puritan envision? Is it a world that most Canadians wish to inhabit? Are they right in believing that only “zionists” would condemn this or that unnamed group? Or have they committed a slander against any decent person in Canada and elsewhere, including Palestine?

Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney decried the alarming level of hatred directed at Canadian Jews, a phenomenon that has spiked since Oct 7, 2023. The word he used to describe it is antisemitism, but its correlation to anti-Israel sentiment is undeniable. Canadian Jews represent 1 per cent of Canada’s population but they are now the objects of nearly 70 per cent of hate crimes. Violent attacks against Jews of the kind that have taken place in the U.S., Britain and Australia have not happened yet – not because they haven’t been planned, but because they have been foiled.

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Quoting Mr. Omar, Ms. Orang writes: “The hopeful recourse is to take resistance as an institution that, while imperfect, cracks open the horizons of political possibility.” Here as elsewhere, her language is vague and she doesn’t define her terms, but it sounds like what she means is that it might not be nice but it is ultimately okay to rape, murder and abduct civilians of any age if you think it might somehow help your political cause.

For the Canadian Jewish community, Mr. Carney’s speech and his acknowledgment of a reality that they have been living, represented a long-awaited moment of resistance and hope. But in Canada today there are conflicting ideas of resistance and hope. It remains to be seen which one will prevail.

So far as I know, there isn’t a Canadian literary magazine devoting an issue to the hard work of mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence. If there was, I would contribute to it.

For those who feel differently and have an essay for ISIS or a haiku for Hamas, The Ex-Puritan is accepting submissions until Aug. 7.