Anne Boyer's Resignation Over Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Call
History is replete with examples of people who have taken a bold step over a conflict involving moral or ethical questions. Anne Boyer, known widely as a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, essayist, and poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine, recently resigned from her post due to the ongoing war in Gaza. Taking a bold stand and highlighting the suffering the people of Gaza have been going through, she called it a "US-backed war against the people of Gaza".
Here is the full text of her letter where she talks about her anger on the ongoing war:
"I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine.
The Israeli state’s US-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers.
The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from this war. It is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.
Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes the most effective mode of protest for artists is to refuse.
I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.
If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present."
- Anne Boyer