It was nearly a year ago since I posted a discussion about double standards within the book industry. One of the people I mentioned in the post, Zachary Webber/Jacob Morgan, is a prolific audiobook narrator who had spread some heinous levels of antisemitism in recent years. In October 2024, he posted a video on social media telling Zionists to kill themselves. At least 80% of Jews identify as Zionists, or people who simply believe that Jewish people have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland of Israel. The actual quotes from Webber said: 

“If you’re a Zionist and you exist, you should not do that anymore,” Webber posted on his Instagram story in September 2024. “No one likes you and you suck, and go f—ing kill yourself.”

After this video was discovered and widely amplified by Jewish readers and content creators (see here), a few prominent authors (Abby Jimenez, Sierra Simone, and Chloe Liese, specifically) dropped Webber as a narrator for their upcoming projects. However, it was recently revealed that Abby Jimenez chose to return to Webber as a narrator. An article in The Forward newspaper offered Jimenez’s justification for this:

“I know I mentioned that I was going with a male voice actor that I’ve never used before, but I’m going to be really honest with you — the fit wasn’t right,” Jimenez posted in her private readers Facebook group. “We did a day of recording and he just wasn’t Chris. All I could think the whole time was how perfectly Zachary would have captured the tone and personality of this character and at the end of recording Day One, I made the choice to change narrators.” 

When reading her quotes, all that *I* could think of was that if Webber can perfectly capture the tone and personality of the character, that the character must be a hateful, racist jerk face. 

Now, if we were to flip this scenario and imagine just for a moment that he Zachary Webber had directed this hateful commentary towards any other marginalized group. Black people, Muslim people, Hindu people, Hispanic people, LGBTQIA+ individuals, Native Americans, Asian Americans, literally any group you can think of. If he had told people of some group that they shouldn’t exist anymore, and to kill themselves, 

The outrage would be immediate, blasted widely on social media and in the news, and he would be dropped by publishers and authors of all types. He wouldn’t be finding any work in the field once his racist, bigoted, and hateful views were exposed. Publishers and authors would be posting their condemnation en masse. But because it’s *just* antisemitism, there is no outcry. 

Antisemitism has been increasingly acceptable in society, especially when couched in ‘anti-Zionism.’ I firmly agree that people of all backgrounds should be able to criticize the actions of a government. Ironically, Israel is the only place in the SWANA region that allows its citizens to protest and be critical of the government. But what I do not agree with is how blatantly Jew-hate is hidden behind anti-Zionism. Etymologically, anti-Zionism breaks down to being against the belief that Jewish people deserve the ability to self-determine in their ancestral homeland.

Criticism of the Israeli government, much like that of any other government, focuses on specific actions or policies. As an American citizen, there are plenty of government actions and policies to criticize within our own country. Saying a country has no right to exist is not a criticism of the government, it’s a call to remove the one safe place in the world that Jewish people have. And when a narrator, an author, or anyone else in the diverse, inclusive world of publishing posts hatred against Jewish people with no consequences, the social justice movement that has spawned DEI and more inclusivity shows its own internal bias—that somehow Jewish people aren’t as deserving of the same protections as other groups.