The Giller Prize ceremony takes place on Monday.
Two big things have changed since last year’s Giller. It’s no longer called The Scotiabank Giller Prize because of a gymnastic compromise whereby the award’s lead sponsor agreed to pay for the sponsorship but remove their name. (This uniquely dysfunctional compromise reminds me that Canada is also the only nation where pharmaceutical companies can either mention the name of their product in their advertising, or what it’s used for, though not both.) But I digress…
Also, between last November and this, some Giller nominees and judges have refused to let their names stand for Canada’s biggest literary prize. Indeed, many writers who have nothing to do with the Giller have also waded in to say, “If nominated I will not stand; if elected I will not serve.”
As if.
This is all because a division of Scotiabank holds an investment in Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers.
But a couple of other factors are at play here: the BDS movement, short for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions that works to delegitimize Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. The second is antisemitism. It’s lost on no one that Elana Rabinovitch, the award’s executive director and daughter of Giller Founder, Jack Rabinovitch, is Jewish.
I wrote last month that forcing literary festivals and awards to sanction their own sponsors will do nothing to force the sponsors to change their wicked wicked ways, but will almost certainly bankrupt the festivals and awards. As Elana Rabinovitch said (or likely screamed): “You cannot achieve peace in the Middle East by destroying a literary arts organization.”
Today, a more malign virus is wafting north across our public square from America.
The BDS movement is calling for everyone (you, me, them) to boycott books written by Jewish writers. Not just Israeli writers, as Sally Rooney is doing. But Jewish writers. And by boycott, I don’t mean “don’t buy,” I mean “make sure no one buys,” even if their books are about Snow White or Bambi’s picnic, or a new cookbook by Ottolenghi.
Jewish authors are falling prey to Review Bombing, the practice of giving one-star reviews to new books on social media, and especially on Goodreads where reviews can be written without proof of having read the book.
Said The New York Times in May: “The novelist Emily St. John Mandel, the author of “Station Eleven” and “Sea of Tranquility,” earned a red “pro-Israel/Zionist” classification because, according to the list’s creator, she ‘travels to Israel frequently talks favorably about it.’”
Mandel, by the way, is a Canadian, twice short-listed for the Giller Prize.
As for boycotting the Giller because its sponsor supports Israel, this kind of cancel culture will hurt Scotiabank (whose assets stood at $1.41 trillion this week) not one whit.
It will far more likely decimate the Giller. And after Scotiabank leaves, which it can do contractually in 2026, what bank or insurer would willingly step in to replace it? Banking and insurance are about reducing risk, and especially these days, reputational risk.
The Giller Prize, like every not-for-profit group, is free to find sponsorship elsewhere, of course. But just ask any non-profit or its sponsorship committee, how easy it is to find corporate funding these days, and they will roll their eyes, as I do mine when I look for sponsor money.
Again, Review Bombing will not hurt the big publishers: Harper Collins did US $2 billion in business last year; Penguin Random House did US $4.75 billion. But it could cripple small Canadian-owned publishers, and encourage them not to take a chance on a Canadian writer who happens to be Jewish, and whose book may have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine or being Jewish.
This got me thinking about what the criteria actually are for boycotting any arts initiative in Canada these days, and how the practice of Ready-Fire-Aim boycotting might get worse.
Today, a sponsor must have ties to Israel’s defense sector in order for its sponsee to be sanctioned. Of Canada’s five Big Banks, three (Scotia, RBC and TD) have investments in companies that support Israel’s military. These three banks have 29 million customers in Canada. I’d guess that close to none of us 29 million have closed our accounts and moved to a bank that doesn’t invest in Israel’s defense.
Also, six Canadian pension funds hold investments in Israeli defense companies. So if you receive a Canada Pension Plan cheque or will someday (CPP covers 22 million of us), know that your monthly pension payment in small part comes from the Israeli defense sector. Actually, in a microscopically small part.
But given the righteous speed and suicidal fury of the boycotters, it shouldn’t take long for their sponsor-victims just to have ties to Israel, period.
This leaves us with a choice about doing business with Israeli companies.
For example, the driving app Waze was invented by three veterans of the Israeli intelligence unit, Unit 8200, and sold to Google in 2013. Also, Tel Aviv-based Teva Pharmaceuticals offers “the world’s largest medicine cabinet,” of 3,600 medicines that 200,000,000 people take every day.
I use Waze to drive safely because it tells me things the other traffic apps don’t. I also take Teva’s generic version of my heart drugs in order to stay alive. But unplugging Waze and using non-Israeli pharmaceuticals to express my displeasure with Israel’s actions with the Palestinians is a completely useless virtue signal that helps no one.
The Giller Prize will be broadcast on CBC on Monday, November 18 at 9:00 p.m. ET.
I hope it goes smoothly, and better than last year. I fear it won’t.
As Dostoyevsky said long ago: “Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”
Meanwhile…
1. Why we…should eat pizza…get organized…shower often…love owls…
and fall in love.
2. Who holds views far to the left of the minorities they champion? White progressives.
Maureen Dowd’s post-US election column in The New York Times showed a revealing chart from The Financial Times. It said that, “White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that ‘racism is built into our society.’ Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that ‘America is the greatest country in the world.’” Seems to be true in Britain too.
3. Resourceful still. Speaking of sweat, much as we like to think of ourselves being beyond hewers of wood and drawers of water, Canada is ranked 4th in the world in the value of our natural resources, below Russia, the US and Saudi Arabia.
4. Male menopause. Britain takes far better care of menopausal women than North America does. Big companies like HSBC, Unilever and even the West Ham United soccer club are scrambling to be declared ‘menopause friendly.’
Indeed, when it comes to support and treatment for male menopause (andropause)Britain’s so far ahead of us that The Times of London complained last week after the BBC broadcast a documentary on the ‘manopause’ that only a quarter of hospitals and 40 per cent of police forces still have no menopause policies, even though their middle-aged staff are searching for “advice on helping male staff members cope with mood swings, irritability and ‘man boobs’.”
5. What are the health hazards of space travel? Here are some non-obvious ones. And some recent unspoken ones. But the health opportunities from drugs developed in space factories are vast and complicated.
Speaking of outer space, Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute this week announced its first female head, Marcela Carena, to lead one of the world’s great centres for theoretical physics.
6. Betrayal and reconciliation. Elnur Soltanov, a spokesman for COP29, was caught on camera promoting fossil fuel deals. Meanwhile, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had lunch, and in 13 months America will be 250 years old. Oh, and Kathy Bates doesn’t feel guilty any more.
7. Maybe you’re just lucky. We’re all hard-working and hugely talented. But we are all fabulous at downplaying the role of luck in our lives, and its cousin chance, and its cousin, chaos. And speaking of luck, consider the lowly chrysalis.
8. Galas. Too often, all the energy generated on gala night disappears the next day. So follow-up is now the game, and no one does it better than the Royal Canadian Geographical Society who offered “10 fantastic moments” from their Geographica dinner in Ottawa last week. Speaking of the RCGS, if you’d like to help send a submarine to film Shackleton’s shipwreck off the coast of Labrador, they have one for you.
9. Run to see these shows. First, Nike’s show near Basel. Next, darkness at noon in the world’s most northern town. Next, Bellingcat is the subject of a new documentary. As the intro notes: “Corrupt governments hate them. The future of journalism needs them. Bellingcat’s independent collective of citizen journalists uses groundbreaking investigation tactics to uncover earthshaking truths about everything from war zones to drug cartels.”
10. Who burns out faster? Retired Ontario Chief Justice the Hon. George Strathy speaks out often about lawyers, and especially litigators and how their gladiator culture isn’t great for their mental health or their firms. What is? Ideas like Britain’s Mindful Business Charter.
But who burns out faster than lawyers? Doctors.
11. What I’m liking. The best ever singing of God Save the King goes to the French Army. Best national anthem? France’s La Marseillaise, here decoded by Tom Holland on his podcast, The Rest is History.