In the decade I spent pitching my debut book proposal to prospective agents and publishers, I faced repeated rejections that were often coupled with a knowing yet sympathetic, backhanded compliment.
“I love the book idea and would personally want to read it,” I was told more than once. “The issue is the subject matter. I don’t think it can sell.”
This certainly could have been a convenient and common way of gently turning a writer down, the literary equivalent of “it’s not you, it’s me.”
It is incredibly hard to break into the book world. The fragmented market is flooded with proposals of every kind, and I had no illusions about my manuscript becoming the next Great Gatsby. Still, it was the oft-repeated explanation that made me wonder whether something else could also be in play.
After all, I was proposing a narrative that explored my grandfather’s mysterious World War II past, the largely untold contribution of Jews like him to the Allied war effort, and the overlooked heroic contributions of such World War II veterans to Israel’s victory in the 1948 War of Independence.
All this was touchy, I was warned. It was too Israel-focused. Too Jewy. Too much trouble.
To be sure, many wonderful and successful Jewish-themed and Israel-based books were still being published and promoted. But as a first-time author trying to break in? I was encouraged to take a different path.
This was the prevailing sentiment even before the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. After it, an Israeli and Zionist point of view became so toxic that getting a book like this published seemed all but impossible. The fact that it was also Holocaust-adjacent, a subject regarded as already oversaturated in the literary marketplace, was another strike against it.
A unique space
Thankfully, I eventually found a home at The University of Toronto Press, and that’s how Zaidy’s Band came into the world on November 11, 2025.
As an academic publisher, UTP was less concerned about guaranteeing a financial windfall. More importantly, it had an imprint called the New Jewish Press that was devoted to telling just these kinds of stories.
Only after I signed my contract did I realize how unique a space it occupied in the publishing world, particularly in Canada, where Jewish-centric books were facing increased scrutiny.
My November book launch in Toronto found a receptive audience among the formidable local Jewish community, and it earned favorable reviews in the Jewish press. It seemed the People of the Book could always be counted on when it came to books.
But among the general population? Not so much.
I didn’t consider my book to be exclusively Jewish. I had ambitions for a wider audience, since it also touched upon the broader Canadian World War II experience, the Canadian military, and its impact on Canadian life overall.
I figured this was a story that Canadians would especially be eager to champion, particularly amid a renewed, anti-Trump-inspired wave of patriotism.
So, I reached out to museums, military institutes, veterans’ associations, university faculties, and high school history programs about speaking opportunities. My publisher also tried to arrange general audience appearances in Toronto and coverage in mainstream media outlets.
But the responses we got were eerily reminiscent of those I first faced when pitching the book years earlier. It was either a deafening silence or a coded hint that my book wasn’t big enough to warrant the risk of potentially stirring up a scene.
Boycott concerns
Sadly, I recognized the concern. Israeli culture and arts – actors, singers, dancers, academics, even Eurovision competitors – have long been treated with suspicion and potential boycott.
This has only increased since Israel’s current government came to power in 2022 and has been supercharged and increasingly blended with outright antisemitism since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israeli reprisals.
When I was in Toronto, I stopped in to sign books at several branches of Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore chain. These visits were cordial but also had a clandestine feel to them, which was understandable since pro-Palestinian activists had targeted the chain before, protesting outside several stores over CEO Heather Reisman’s ties to Israel.
One downtown store was even vandalized with red paint that was splashed across a glass door as protesters accused Reisman of funding genocide.
It was a similarly low-profile visit to the University of Toronto’s own bookstore, on a campus that saw one of the larger anti-Israel encampments in recent years.
When I was writing my book, I didn’t think there was anything particularly controversial about it. Initially, I simply saw it as an ode to the past.
From my once naive perspective, I had assumed that the wider Middle East conflict was primarily over Israel’s post-1967 borders rather than its 1948 founding. But now, merely referencing Israel’s creation in favorable terms invited scrutiny.
After Canada’s ambassador to Israel generously praised my book and thanked me on social media for guiding her through a museum that showcased the contributions of Canadian Jews in World War II, she was met with a stream of online venom that derided her as a “traitor” and accused her of “complicity in genocide.”
One commentator asked whether she preferred to be “strung up” or to “die by firing squad.”
Given this climate, it’s easy to understand why non-Jewish establishments and publications would choose to keep their distance. Why invite such an onslaught?
Jewish vulnerability
The great irony is that my nod to history ended up becoming remarkably relevant. The Jewish vulnerability described in my book was now being felt in a way that it hadn’t been since the days of World War II.
These voices are no longer mere relics of the past. They speak to us as we are enduring perhaps the most dangerous wave of antisemitism worldwide since then, and the most perilous period for Israel as well.
After decades of assuming that both Israel’s long-term survival and the continued safety and prosperity of Diaspora Jews were a given, we have been snapped back to insecurities like those that molded the characters of my book in the 1940s.
This is no longer an exercise in nostalgia. There is much we can learn from them.
That’s exactly why I had hoped my book would break out of the siloed Jewish community.
I was looking for an audience among younger non-Jews for whom the word “genocide” has misguidedly become more associated with Israel’s recent war in Gaza rather than the reason the term had been coined in the first place – the Holocaust of six million European Jews.
The goal of my book was to tell another, lesser-known side of this story, that of the 1.5 million Jewish soldiers who fought for the Allies in World War II and the 250,000 who died in battle.
To me, it seems more important than ever to share these types of stories now, and we need brave partners to make it happen.■
Aron Heller, who lives in Israel, is a reporter, writer, broadcaster, and author of Zaidy’s Band: The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II. He focuses on technology storytelling and podcasting, and was previously a longtime Associated Press correspondent and journalism lecturer. He has covered 10 Israeli elections, four Middle East wars, and dozens of other major world events across five continents.
Zaidy’s Band: The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II is available at utpublishing.com and major book retailers. Learn more about Heller at www.aronheller.com.