All books featured in this new section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2025, pp. 82-83
Middle East Books Review
By Sim Kern, Interlink Books, 2025, paperback, 200 pp. MEB $18.95
Reviewed by Steve France
WITH A GRABBY, in-your-face title (Genocide Bad.), anti-Zionist influencer Sim Kern smoothly brings the snarky energy of social media together with fresh and learned insights into the roots of Israel’s genocidal program—how it thrives in the liberal capitalist world order, and most importantly, how to attack it. This fearless, comprehensive assault on Zionism draws additional strength and credibility from Kern’s own candid story of transformation—from suffering cruel, anti-Jewish taunts and shunning as a teen in rural Illinois, to becoming an “anti-anti-Semitism educator,” to despising and fighting Zionism.
About the two-word title, Kern says, “It should be that simple.” Just “point at a genocide, name it, and the people of the world should rise up in unison” to stop it. What’s to talk about? The trouble is that Zionists have successfully obscured Israel’s actions beneath such a “dense web of propaganda”—and punished so zealously mere use of the word—that many people are confused about what’s going on. Others, who see what’s happening, are afraid to even utter the word genocide, much less apply it to Israel.
In a TikTok video posted on Oct. 9, 2023, “Jewish author speaks out after October 7th, 2023,” Kern bluntly called out people who were crying for the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas but ignoring that Israel was slaughtering whole families in Gaza. “You see Israelis as people, but you do not see Palestinians as people,” Kern said. “And if you live in the U.S. and that’s you, it’s understandable,” because that’s how the media presents the story: “Israelis get to be white. Palestinians are non-white and they are therefore not people.” To do anything to humanize them is labelled anti-Semitic. Kern suggested that people “read a book, any book, by a Palestinian author…it will humanize Palestinians for you and change the way you see this conflict forever.”
The video was viewed by more than 20 million people. Overnight, Kern became an “influencer for a free Palestine” and began pumping out more videos. Hannah Moushabeck, of Interlink Books, spotted them and persuaded Kern to write this book. The finished product was fact-checked by Nadim Bawalsa, a Palestinian scholar, and read in manuscript by, among others, Rashid Khalidi. His bottom-line comment, according to Interlink founder Michel Moushabeck, was, “This book needs to come out quickly.”
Advance orders from retailers hit 25,000 in February, while 3,000 individuals pre-ordered Genocide Bad. It cuts the Zionist “mountain of bullshit” into the nine most common types of hasbara (“propaganda,” in Hebrew), each of which gets a chapter. For every nasty action or policy that makes them look bad, Zionists have invented elaborate fictions to make themselves seem the “victims, underdogs or heroes,” Kern observes. For every lie revealed, they hurl back at critics many more, drawn from a vast trove. Luckily, however, “you don’t have to expose all the lies for [most people] to realize that the mountain is bullshit all the way down,” Kern says. Rookie anti-Zionists can “start by just picking a lie—any lie—and correcting it.”
The many witty zingers, the deep drillings of the research and the originality of analysis in Genocide Bad indicate Kern delights in this work. A favorite point is that “every Zionist accusation is a confession.” For example: Israel falsely accuses Hamas of beheading babies and using human shields, while in truth it is Israel that has literally shredded babies in Gaza and constantly uses human shields.
The book makes clear that fighting Zionism has deep personal meaning, both because of Kern’s own experience of being a Jew and from realizing how much impact that has had on Kern’s self-image and relations with others. In an extremely rich chapter countering perhaps the heaviest weapon in the Zionist arsenal—that criticizing Israel is always anti-Semitic—Kern makes a strong argument that Zionism is itself an expression, as well as a product, of anti-Semitism. After describing ugly anti-Jewish incidents from Kern’s own childhood, adolescence and beyond, the book delves into peculiar attitudes toward—and of—Jews in the ancient world all the way up to modern times.
Kern also points out that from its inception Zionism has been deemed anti-Semitic by some anti-Zionist Jews. “Early Zionists were the original self-hating Jews, expressing an open dislike of their fellow European Jews that mirrored the rhetoric of anti-Semites,” Kern writes. Today, even more, “Fighting anti-Jewish hate necessitates fighting Zionism,” as does fighting anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate. What’s more, understanding why Israel is the darling protégé of the West reveals deeper evils in liberal capitalism and how it runs the world.
Genocide Bad is remarkable in being so accessible to readers unfamiliar with Palestine-Israel, and so sophisticated in its understanding of the nature of Zionism and the threat it poses.
Steve France is an activist, writer and lawyer (now retired) living outside Washington, DC.
