It is an iron rule of journalism that if a headline says someone was punished or censored for their “Palestine support,” that claim will be debunked by the text of the story.
So for example, New York magazine—which recently produced a cover feature on why the Middle East and North Africa needs a rebrand to exclude Jews—has the following on its website:
“Sally Rooney Can’t Publish in the U.K. Because of Her Palestine Support.”
None of that is true. So what really happened? For that, you can go to the UK Telegraph, which has standards:
“Sally Rooney’s books pulled from shelves over Palestine Action support.”
Notice the subtle difference? Here’s what happened.
Last year, Rooney—author of popular novels about unbearable Sally Rooney-like characters who are unbearably lonely and sad—announced her intention to funnel future book proceeds to a proscribed terrorist organization. That group, which uses anti-Semitic violence against civilians for political ends—hence its designation as a terrorist organization—is called Palestine Action.
It is illegal in Britain to fund terrorism; Rooney can’t give her proceeds to Hamas either. Here is what Rooney said:
“I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action.”
Rooney worded her statement that way because she was trying to get her books banned in the UK, so she could take her martyrdom to the next level.
But that’s not how the law works. Britain wouldn’t ban her books. But it does outlaw the transfer of funds earmarked for terrorist groups. So Rooney’s UK publisher would simply be forced to withhold UK earnings earmarked as such.
This didn’t satisfy Rooney either. She wanted to be able to claim she was being censored, and Britain absolutely refused to indulge her.
So she figuratively tied herself to the railroad tracks. Rooney and her publisher pulled the books from UK shelves.
Why does the tantrum of a mopey Marxist mediocrity matter to the big picture?
The answer is twofold. First, Rooney, a devotee of the anti-Jewish boycott movement, has gone out of her way to express unambiguous anti-Semitism rather than try to hide behind “criticism of Israel.”
A few years ago, she refused to let her bestselling novel be translated into Hebrew, lest any Hebrews anywhere try to read her novelistic cry for help.
In March, Rooney gave a speech in which she portrayed the defeat of the Jewish state as of world-historical significance: “By standing in solidarity with Palestine, we are learning how to fight for life on earth.”
She went on: “What else can make our lives endurable in times as dark as these? What else, in the face of such horror, can give us a reason to go on, to fend off despair, to live with ourselves.”
Now, this is genuinely insane stuff—believing that destroying Israel is the only thing worth living for. But Rooney is famous and popular, and the normalizing, let alone valorizing, of end-times anti-Semitism is dangerous, as is her attempt to normalize funding terrorist organizations.
Second, Rooney’s con job is an extension of the pro-Palestinian war on free speech. It is, in fact, an escalation.
Since October 7, a key anti-Zionist tactic has been to blur the lines between speech and violence in an attempt to coopt defenders of free expression into a campaign centered on physical violence and the denial of civil rights.
What happens is that actual free-speech crises and the legitimate suppression of liberty get lost entirely. Authoritarians like Hamasniks hijack the language of democracy to roll back democracy where it already exists and prevent it from taking root in places that badly need it.
Writers who support artistic boycotts and blacklists are no friends of liberty. As with Rooney, it’s always only a matter of time before their war on Jewish freedom extends to the rest of the world.