The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival (VanCAF, or VCAA) has drawn backlash after announcing Israeli American cartoonist Miriam Libicki as a featured guest at this year’s edition, being held during the weekend of July 4. Comments on Instagram accuse Libicki of being a “genocidal ethnostate supporter,” “a destructive Zionist,” and as having “complicity in the genocidal Israeli regime.” The controversy comes two years after Libicki was banned from the festival over her service in the Israel Defense Forces, a decision VanCAF eventually apologized for as an “ultimately wrong headed” attempt to express solidarity with Gaza during Israel’s genocide.
Libicki, who was born in Ohio, but moved to Vancouver after serving in the IDF from 2000 to 2002, responded, writing, “I previously identified as a liberal Zionist. I don’t currently identify as a Zionist. I identify as it’s complicated (I am working on a zine about that right now). I’m proud to be a guest at VanCAF 2026. I believe VanCAF can still rise above its mistakes, and be a big-tent festival for many generations, many genres and many humanistic viewpoints. I’m not going to engage with trolls, here or elsewhere, but it is a fact that I have never taken arts funding from Israel or been affiliated with an Israeli University. I’ve only been a cartoonist in Canada. So if one is looking at PACBI, that doesn’t apply to me, sorry.”
VanCAF follows the guidelines set by PACBI (the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel), a part of the wider BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign, stating, “Until Israel ends its war and genocide and works toward reparations, VCAA cannot ethically support any organizations that continue to fund Israel’s campaign against the citizens of Palestine (not Hamas). We DO support individual artists who tell stories that may relate to or reflect on challenging and complex social, cultural, and political subjects. VCAA will, to the best of our abilities, not allow any discriminatory works at the festival. We strive to support artists who make comics, especially those from marginalized groups, be it race, gender, orientation, or religion.”
The targeting of Libicki, two years after she drew support from Palestinian and indigenous creatives like Marguerite Dabaie and Alina Pete, echoes similar recent incidents where Jews, Israelis and others have been deemed insufficiently critical of Israel. Filmmaker Nadav Lapid, a strong critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has faced a boycott for receiving financing from the Israel Film Fund for his latest film, Yes, while historian Omer Bartov has been accused of acknowledging Israel has committed genocide “in a manner that seeks to blunt [the term’s] force.” PACBI also stated that the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, which followed a group of Palestinian and Israeli activists working together, violated its anti-normalization guidelines.
Libicki herself has raised funds for a similar group, The Mothers’ Call, a joint effort between the Palestinian and Israeli peace groups Women of the Sun and Women Wage Peace. She also recently shared a link to Branches of Hope for Gaza, a charity aiding devastated families in the region. She chronicled her time in the IDF in Jobnik!, and works primarily as an instructor at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her most recent book, But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, was published in 2022.
As shown in the Instagram post, other VanCaf attendees and exhibitors are still incensed by Libicki’s inclusion in the event and are questioning their participation. However, there may be other legalities in play. As one commenter put it:
y’all [as far as I know] miriam has vancaf in a legal bind that also limits how explicitly the board is able to publicly address the decisions being made here, and under what circumstances. unfortunate how generating a collective understanding of what’s been going on these last years is limited by that. encouraging you to find some offline conversations [about] this
Banning/Attacking Libicki does not help a single person in Palestine. I understand people want to do something to stop what is happening there, but this is does nothing to that end.