92NY, a New York cultural venue first founded as a Jewish organization, cancelled a talk by the author Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Photo by Getty Images

By Irene Katz Connelly November 2, 2023

A play in Paris. A book launch in London. A nonprofit’s anniversary banquet in Virginia. 

These are among the spate of cultural events featuring Palestinian artists and advocates that have been canceled in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack and Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, influential cultural figures have faced discipline or firing for taking public pro-Palestinian stances. 

In some cases, venues or organizers have cited security concerns or sensitivity to the feelings of those impacted by terror attacks; in others, supporters of Israel have led successful campaigns to cancel events linked to Palestinian figures or Muslim organizations. Some incidents, like the postponement of an award ceremony for the prominent Palestinian author Adania Shibli, have prompted open letters with hundreds of signatories; meanwhile, small local events have been scrapped with little notice. 

PEN America, a nonprofit promoting free expression, condemned the cancellations, noting that some Jewish events had also been called off over safety threats. In a statement, the organization said that “the voices of writers and others should not be stilled or silenced.” Palestine Legal, a law firm that provides legal aid to Palestinian rights advocates, told Jewish Currents that it had seen a surge in requests for help, and a senior attorney warned of a “McCarthyite backlash” against free speech. 

This is an ongoing timeline of event cancellations and high-profile firings in the United States and abroad. The Forward will update this list with future developments. 

Oct. 8:

The magazine Poetry indefinitely postponed publication of a review of poet Sam Sax’s collection Pig, which grapples with themes of anti-Zionism and Jewish law. The review’s writer, Joshua Gutterman Tranen, said on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) that Poetry leadership told him they wanted to avoid “‘picking’ a side.” After Gutterman Tranen spoke publicly about the shelved review Nov. 1, over 2,000 poets and writers pledged not to send work to Poetry or participate in events hosted by its parent organization, the Poetry Foundation.

Oct. 10: 

PalMusic UK, a British organization that supports young Palestinian musicians, postponed its 10th-anniversary concert set to take place at London’s Southwark Cathedral. In a statement on its website, the organization said that cathedral staff called off the concert due to “concern for the safety of the audience.”

Oct. 11:

Choisy-le-Roi, a suburb of Paris, canceled a performance of And Here I Am, a play developed by The Freedom Theatre, a theater troupe based in the Jenin refugee camp. The group, which was on tour in France at the time, released a statement blaming the town’s mayor, Tonono Panetta, for the decision, condemning “the silencing of Palestinian voices.” The statement noted that performances in other cities, including Bordeaux and Lyon, would go on as planned.

Oct. 12: 

London police canceled a book talk for Nathan Thrall’s A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, a book about a Palestinian family living outside Jerusalem, citing “security concerns.” Thrall, who began an international book tour shortly before the Oct. 7 massacres, has seen a number of events canceled, including one at the Los Angeles literary nonprofit Writers Bloc and another at the Manhattan synagogue B’nai Jeshurun. 

The Boston Palestine Film Festival, which was scheduled to begin 10 days of screenings, canceled all live events and provided virtual screenings instead. On the festival’s website, organizers said they were committed to “centering the safety of our audiences and to being sensitive to all members of our community who have been impacted.”

Oct. 13:

The German literary organization LitProm postponed a ceremony to honor Palestinian author Adania Shibli at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest international gathering of publishing professionals. An open letter criticizing the decision garnered hundreds of signatures, including those of Nobel Prize winners Olga Tokarczuk and Annie Ernaux. At the same time, the book fair released a statement pledging to “make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible.”

Oct. 16:

A movie theater in Rochester, New York, decided not to host an annual Palestinian film festival after the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester called for a postponement. Meredith Dragon, the federation’s CEO, told Spectrum News that the film festival showcased “anti-Israel propaganda.” A member of Rochester Witness for Palestine, the festival’s organizer, responded that the federation “should be absolutely ashamed” of shutting down a Palestinian cultural event. The festival hosted screenings and talks online. 

Oct. 17:

A Welsh community center called off a fundraising concert for Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity providing health care in the occupied territories. The event would have included a performance by the Klezmonauts, a local klezmer band. Concert organizers told the BBC that the community center was afraid of appearing “sympathetic to a terrorist attack.”

A Houston Hilton refused to host a planned conference for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, which would have featured a keynote address from Rep. Rashida Tlaib. The decision came after a campaign mounted by the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, a New York-based business association. The hotel attributed its decision to “escalating security concerns in the current environment.” Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the USCPR, said that Hilton had violated the organization’s First Amendment rights and engaged in “ethnic, racial and religious discrimination.”

The Frick Pittsburgh, an art museum, quietly postponed an exhibit on Islamic art originally scheduled to open in November. The museum’s director, Elizabeth Barker said that the collection of glassware, ceramics, and other artisan objects from across the Middle East “would be traumatic” for visitors. Speaking to the publication TribLIVE, Barker could not say whether any of the exhibit’s artifacts originated in the region that is now Israel and the occupied territories. A local CAIR representative said that the museum was conflating Islam with terrorism.

Oct. 19:

The Council on American Islamic Relations announced that it would relocate a banquet scheduled to take place at a hotel in Virginia after the venue received bomb and death threats. In a statement the group said that anonymous callers threatened to “kill specific hotel staff in their homes” and “storm the hotel in a repeat of the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.” A separate CAIR banquet in Maryland was also called off, and both events took place together at an undisclosed location.

Oct. 20:

92NY, a premier cultural center in Manhattan, scrapped a talk by the author Viet Thanh Nguyen, a longtime supporter of the BDS movement who had recently signed an open letter calling for a cease-fire and condemning the killing of civilians by both Israel and Hamas. When 92NY said, hours before the talk was scheduled to begin, that it would not host Nguyen, the head of the organization’s poetry center moved the event to a Manhattan bookstore. At least two poetry center staffers subsequently resigned and several writers pulled out of upcoming appearances, forcing 92Y to put its entire literary reading series on hold. 

ARTnews reported that the Palestinian artist Emily Jacir had been removed from the list of speakers at a workshop hosted by the Hamburger Bahnhof, a museum in Berlin. 

Oct. 22:

Influential Hollywood agent Maha Dakhil was stripped of leadership roles at her company, Creative Artists Agency. The decision reportedly came after Dakhil described Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as “genocide” in an Instagram story; she later apologized, telling Variety that she “used hurtful language” and supports “humanity and peace.” Nevertheless, CAA reported that Dakhil had stepped down from the agency’s board and her role as co-head of the motion picture department.

Oct. 23: 

The editor-in-chief of the scientific journal eLife, Michael Eisen, announced that he had been removed from his position after retweeting an article from the satirical newspaper The Onion headlined, “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.”

I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.

— Michael Eisen (@mbeisen) October 23, 2023

Oct. 25: 

El Museo del Barrio, a New York museum of Latin American art, declined to display an altar commissioned for its Day of the Dead programming after the artists added a Palestinian flag. The museum told The New York Times that the artists, Odalys Burgoa and Roy Baizan, had “converted the altar from a religious and cultural symbol into a political statement.” Burgoa and Baizan said they wanted to “celebrate revolutionaries who create change in the community” and that museum curators understood the altar’s political implications when they commissioned it.

Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum tried to remove references to Palestinian cities and culture from an exhibit on death rituals in different societies. Artist Jenin Yaseen told Hyperallergic that shortly before the exhibit opened, the museum asked to alter a reproduction of her painting that depicted a Palestinian corpse being removed from a grave by soldiers. Contributor Sameerah Ahmad said that the museum asked to remove a reference to “Turmus Ayya, Palestine,” her father’s hometown, from a text panel explaining her installation. On Oct. 28, Yaseen and Ahmad staged a sit-in at the museum, refusing to leave for 18 hours. The museum subsequently agreed to display the artworks as originally planned.

Oct. 26: 

The publishers of Artforum fired editor-in-chief David Velasco after the art magazine posted an open letter supporting Palestinian liberation and condemning “institutional silence” around Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza. While the letter denounced “violence against all civilians,” it did not initially mention the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack; an addendum added after publication expressed “revulsion at the horrific massacres of 1,400 people in Israel.” Velasco, who had worked at Artforum since 2005 and signed the letter alongside thousands of others, told The New York Times that he had “no regrets,” and criticized Artforum for bowing to “outside pressure.” 

The Wexner Center, an art museum attached to The Ohio State University, canceled a November roundtable discussion featuring the Palestinian artist Jumana Manna. On the event’s webpage, the museum said it wanted to avoid “conversations about a region at war.” The Wexner Center is currently hosting a solo exhibition of Manna’s work. The artist, who lives in Berlin, has spoken publicly about facing censorship over her anti-Zionist views.

Oct. 28:

The University of Vermont canceled a planned talk by the Palestinian poet and activist Mohammed El-Kurd, with administrators writing that they could not “adequately provide safety and security” for the event. A local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America started a letter-writing campaign urging the university to reinstate the talk, while organizers said that El-Kurd would speak online instead.

A Houston synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El, refused to host a reading by Nguyen, the author whose appearance at 92NY had been canceled a few days before. An Emanu-El representative told the Houston Chronicle that the synagogue had canceled the event because Nguyen signed an open letter calling for a cease- fire. A local arts nonprofit that had partnered with Emanu-El in organizing the event found another venue to host it.

An Orlando Doubletree Hotel canceled plans to host a summit for Arab America, an organization that aims to increase media representation of Arab Americans. In a statement, Arab America said that the decision came after the hotel received calls questioning the event. Political analyst Omar Baddar, who had planned to speak at the event, said on X that the cancellation recalled the wave of Islamophobia that followed 9/11.

Oct. 29:

A Chicago Hyatt hotel refused to host a convention for the advocacy group American Muslims for Palestine. The hotel said it had received several threats related to the event, arguing in a statement that going forward with the convention would cause “an increased risk to the safety and security of hotel guests, colleagues, and the community.” In its own statement, AMP lambasted the hotel for capitulating to outside pressure and said the cancellation was part of a broader effort to “delegitimize and silence Pro-Palestinian human rights voices.”

Nov. 8: 

Christie’s removed two paintings by Lebanese artist Ayman Baalbaki from auction after receiving “complaints,” Reuters reported. One of the paintings in question shows a man wearing a kaffiyeh-like scarf over his face; the other, part of a larger series on protests in the Arab world, depicts a person wearing a gas mask and a bandana emblazoned with the Arabic word for “revolutionaries.” Although the auction house did not specify the nature of the complaints, Baalbaki said he believed they were related to Israel’s war with Hamas. “When we start to mess with freedom of expression in art, in novels, in anything that has cultural significance, it snowballs fast,” the artist told Reuters. 

Nov. 13:

The Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, ended its collaboration with the American artist and academic Anaïs Duplan and his studio, Studio AGD, after he posted on Instagram in support of BDS. The museum had invited Studio AGD to curate a selection of Afrofuturist art for an upcoming exhibition. A spokesperson said in an email to the Forward that museum leadership based the decision on the German legislature’s categorization of BDS as an antisemitic movement. In a joint statement to the Forward, the members of Studio AGD said they were “shocked and upset” by the decision, and that the museum had made “no attempt at having a conversation before cancelling our section of the show.”

Nov. 14:

London’s Lisson Gallery indefinitely postponed an exhibit of work by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has posted prolifically about the war, sharing videos of destruction in Gaza and protests around the world. The Art Newspaper reported that the gallery acted in response to a specific, now-deleted post in which the artist said that “the sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world” and seemed to link U.S. aid to Israel to the American Jewish community’s “significant presence” and “media influence.”

Nov. 16: 

Arizona State University canceled a talk featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib and organized by the Arizona Palestine Network, an advocacy group. While the university said that the event had been planned “outside of ASU policies and procedures,” organizers told The Arizona Republic that they had coordinated with administrators for months. The cancellation came shortly after a group of state legislators released a statement saying that Tlaib’s views were “not welcome in the state of Arizona.” 

Nov. 21:

Arnolfini, an art museum in Bristol, England, decided not to host two events for the Bristol Palestine Film Festival, a screening of the film Farha and a poetry night headlined by the rapper Lowkey. In a statement, Arnolfini attributed the cancellations to the “current tensions caused by the external international environment” and said that it could not be confident that the events, originally scheduled for early December, “would not stray into political activity.” On the festival’s webpage, organizers wrote that they were “disappointed” by the decision but had found other venues to host the events. 

The Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, a German exhibition of contemporary photography, was canceled after one of the curators, Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam, made social media posts that organizers deemed antisemitic. In a statement, organizers said the posts in question compared the bombardment of Gaza to the Holocaust and accused Israel of commiting genocide.

Nov. 24: 

Germany’s Saarland Museum canceled a 2024 exhibit of work by the South African Jewish artist Candice Breitz over her “controversial statements” about violence in Israel and Gaza. Breitz, who is based in Berlin, had called for a cease-fire and condemned the Oct. 7 attack on social media. Breitz said that she only learned of the cancellation when a German newspaper reported on it. In an statement to ARTnews, she called the decision “deeply antisemitic,” adding that “many Germans feel absolutely justified in violently condemning Jewish positions that are not consistent with their own.”

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