Sim Kern, Hannah Moushabeck

media release: Cost: Free (Please register.)

Masks are strongly encouraged for this event, especially if you have had any cold or flu symptoms in the 5 days before the event.

This event is one small part of the Palestine Justice Network 2025 annual meeting that we will be hosting in Madison. If you want to learn more about the other great speakers we will be hosting and the conversations we will be having, click here.

About Genocide Bad

Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda and maps a course towards collective liberation in ten unapologetic essays.

Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda in ten unapologetic essays. Drawing connections between Biblical promises and exploding pagers, medieval dress codes and modern-day apartheid, Kern sketches a sweeping history of imperialism with their characteristic blend of far-ranging research, pop-culture insights, and scathing humor.

Kern, a former teacher, journalist, novelist, and book influencer, gained international recognition as an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in the days after October 7th, 2023. At a time when social media was flooded with “I Stand with Israel” posts, Kern started sharing content encouraging their followers to read Palestinian books, learn Palestinian history, and question Western reporting on Palestine—videos which went viral into tens of millions of views.

Despite facing hate messages, death threats, and exile from the Zionist Jewish community, Kern has remained steadfast in their advocacy over the past year. They’ve posted daily videos on Palestinian, Jewish, and colonial history, and they’ve raised over $500,000 in direct aid for families in Gaza—all while navigating the challenges of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting a newborn. In Genocide Bad, Kern reflects on the life experiences that led them to anti-Zionist activism, while capturing and expanding upon their online educational content.

Kern doesn’t flinch when confronting the horrors of genocides past and present, but there is also tremendous hope contained in these pages—hope that springs from examples of courage and resilience in the face of extreme violence, and from the kinds of resistance that might just lead to our collective liberation.

About Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine

A father and his daughters may not be able to return home . . . but they can celebrate stories of their homeland!

As bedtime approaches, three young girls eagerly await the return of their father who tells them stories of a faraway homeland—Palestine. Through their father's memories, the Old City of Jerusalem comes to life: the sounds of juice vendors beating rhythms with brass cups, the smell of argileh drifting through windows, and the sight of doves flapping their wings toward home. These daughters of the diaspora feel love for a place they have never been, a home they cannot visit. But, as their father’s story comes to an end, they know that through his memories, they will always return.  

A Palestinian family celebrates the stories of their homeland in this moving autobiographical picture book debut by Hannah Moushabeck. With heartfelt illustrations by Reem Madooh, this story is a love letter to home, to family, and to the persisting hope of people that transcends borders.

Sim Kern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Free People’s Village, an Indie Next Pick. As a journalist, book influencer, and anti-Zionist Jewish activist, Kern has used their social media platform to share educational content about Palestine and raise more than half a million dollars in direct aid for families in Gaza since October 7th, 2023.

Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and marketer who was raised in a family of booksellers and publishers in Western Massachusetts and England. Born in Brooklyn into Interlink Publishing, a family-run independent publishing house, she learned the power of literature at a young age. Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine is her first picture book. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations.