Guernica editor who published Israeli writer’s coexistence essay resigns
The editor-in-chief of the prestigious literary magazine Guernica whose decision to publish an Israeli writer’s essay about the war in Gaza last month led to the mass resignation of the magazine’s staff has herself resigned from the publication, saying she disagrees with the decision to retract the essay.
Jina Moore announced her resignation in a blog post on Friday, nearly a month after Guernica retracted the essay by the British-Israeli writer and translator Joanna Chen.
“The magazine stands by its retraction of the work; I do not,” Moore wrote in the post.
On the social network X, Moore issued a more pointed critique of the Guernica staffers who objected to Chen’s piece.
“After weeks of difficult conversation, it is clear to me that Guernica’s space for writing on war, injustice, and oppression has evolved away from commitments I consider essential,” she wrote.
Chen’s essay, “From the Edges of a Broken World,” ignited a firestorm at the heart of the literary world’s deeply polarized reaction to the war. After the piece was published in early March, Guernica’s co-publisher called it an “apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” and more than 15 members of the all-volunteer staff resigned in protest. The journal also removed Chen’s essay, appending a note online promising “a more fulsome explanation” for the decision, though none has appeared to date.
Moore said she disagrees with the criticism of the essay.
“Many critics have said the essay normalized the violence Israel has unleashed in Gaza. I disagree,” Moore wrote in her Friday post. “I saw the piece as an example of the difficult work that Guernica is known for: capturing, with complexity and nuance, how such violence is normalized, and how a violent state extracts complicity from its citizens.”
After being retracted, Chen’s piece was later republished by the Washington Monthly, a center-left publication.