Alana Hadid and Jenan Matari have pulled a children’s book they co-authored on the Palestinian experience from Penguin Random House publishers, after they said their account on history was “sanitised and misrepresented”.
Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House, signed the book deal in November 2024, and it was set for release last month.
However, the authors, who have both been outspoken about the plight of Palestinians in the face of Israeli occupation and abuses, included the history of Palestine in the book, with the manuscript also including elements of their own families’ stories.
It touched on the Palestinian resistance, the forced exile of Palestinian civilians and the Palestinian diaspora around the world as a result.
It also centred on how the Palestinian story has long been erased and ignored, as well as the rise of Zionism, the Nakba (Catastrophe of 1948), the relationship between the US and Israel, and how life feels under a military occupation.
It described Israel as a settler colony, and Hadid documented her personal family history, mentioning how her real-estate mogul father Mohammed Hadid and his parents were expelled from Safed, and forced to live as refugees in Syria.
Matari explained in the book how her relatives were expelled from Deir Yassin and Ein Karem after the Israeli massacre in 1948, where over 100 Palestinians were killed.
However, the writers said they withdrew the book after Random House requested changes, after they had submitted a final copy.
Random House told reporters that the process was normal and had “followed our standard bookmaking procedures”.
In excerpts of communications between the authors and Random House shared with The Guardian, the writers and activists engaged in disagreements over language in the book over the course of several months.
One particular sticking point was the 7 October attack on southern Israel, and the writers stating that people under “colonial domination” have the “right to resist”. The book also cited a UN general assembly resolution that says people under colonial domination are entitled to “the right to self-determination” and to restore that right “by any means at their disposal”.
Random House demanded that a disclaimer, or counter-narrative be added to say that the attack on Israel was in violation of international law.
A failure to agree on the details resulted in the authors walking away from the deal, choosing to instead release it through Palestinian-owned US publisher Interlink Books.
“They continued to try to sanitize our history because they didn’t want to make certain communities uncomfortable. But decolonial history is supposed to make you uncomfortable,” Matari said.
“I believe it was a revolutionary book, which is why it was under so much scrutiny,” she continued.
