A e book concerning the Holocaust was “canceled” after the writer stated he refused his editor’s insistence that the introduction embrace criticisms of Israel for committing “battle crimes” in Gaza and the Trump-led US for creating “concentration-style prisons” for migrants.
Rafael Medoff, the writer of the e book “Cartoonists In opposition to the Holocaust,” stated he refused to publish what he believed had been falsehoods editor Craig Yoe needed to place within the e book contracted to be printed by Darkish Horse.
Previous to the present controversy, Darkish Horse printed two of Dr. Medoff’s different books, “Whistleblowers” and “Cartoonists In opposition to Racism” with out incident.
It was solely after the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel that Yoe started demanding that Dr. Medoff denounce Israel as the value to be paid for publishing his new tome “Cartoonists In opposition to the Holocaust,” stated Medoff and the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs.
“The e book was canceled. I used to be canceled,” Medoff, who has written op-eds for The Put up, stated.
Yoe despatched a Sept. 1, 2025 electronic mail to Medoff saying he “thought lengthy and exhausting” about including a separate “word” within the e book to unload on Israel and the US earlier than its deliberate publication.
Yoe stated Trump is “trying to create focus camp-style prisons, is sending American residents to gulag sort prisons in different nations with out structure assured trials,” Yoe stated.
“On the similar time,” he added, ” a rustic populated by an ethnic non secular group who had been immorally and horrifically tortured and killed within the Holocaust for his or her ethnicity is led by a first-rate minister that the world’s high battle crimes court docket has issued warrants for his alleged acts of battle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity.”
Medoff despatched an in depth response to Yoe objecting to slamming Israel and the US, saying the claims Yoe needed to print had been “factually inaccurate” and would politicize the e book.
“There aren’t any focus camps in America, and it’s not a Nazi nation. …Misusing the time period ‘focus camps’ diminishes the struggling that was skilled by the Jewish victims of the true focus camps within the Thirties-Forties,” he informed Yoe.
He additionally stated Yoe was accusing Israel of “genocide” by saying the Jewish state was committing “crimes in opposition to humanity.
Medoff informed The Put up, “Accusing Israel of genocide is a lie, and requiring a Holocaust scholar to denounce Israel to see his e book printed is antisemitic bullying.”
Yoe, a former artistic director for the Muppets and a longtime cartoonist, was an editor with Darkish Horse as he labored on Medoff’s e book. He has since severed his relationship with the publishing home.
Philip Simon, the authorized counsel for Darkish Horse, stated the publishing firm canceled the e book, however made no point out of any political controversy.
“Craig Yoe, of Yoe Books, did not make our deliberate schedule for this e book because the mission’s packager, so Darkish Horse stepped away from it and determined to not publish it final yr,” Simon informed Carly Gammill, authorized director of StandWithUs, in a June 3, 2026 electronic mail.
“Darkish Horse doesn’t plan to publish Cartoonists In opposition to the Holocaust . . . it was a choice primarily based on our firm’s monetary wants and a few scheduling points that had delayed the mission an excessive amount of already.”
Neither Darkish Horse nor Yoe would touch upon Medoff’s allegations.
Carly Gammill of StandWithUs stated, “When a comic book e book writer pressures a Holocaust scholar to denounce the Jewish state earlier than his personal e book on the Holocaust can see print, the irony is tough to overlook.”
The Medoff Holocaust e book cancellation is simply the newest in a sequence of punishing Jewish artists and public figures after Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Different examples embrace comedian e book creator Miriam Libicki, who was canceled by the Vancouver Comedian Arts Pageant in 2024 (and later allowed to return after an outcry) and filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who was pushed out of the FID Marseille movie competition that can happen this month, as a result of they’re Israeli or pro-Israel.
Medoff is the founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Research, primarily based in Washington, DC.
9 of the 150 editorial cartoons within the canceled e book had been printed in The Put up again within the Forties, for example what was recognized in America concerning the Holocaust because it was going down.
