{"id":809088,"date":"2026-05-20T04:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T04:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/809088\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T04:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T04:50:15","slug":"author-sally-rooney-to-issue-hebrew-novel-with-bds-complient-israeli-publisher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/809088\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Sally Rooney to issue Hebrew novel with BDS-complient Israeli publisher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who drew headlines in 2021 for refusing a Hebrew translation of one of her books, is now publishing her latest novel in Hebrew through an Israeli publisher approved by boycott<\/a> activists.<\/p>\n

The Hebrew translation of Intermezzo, due out next month, will be published by November Books in collaboration with the left-wing Israeli news sites +972 Magazine and Local Call. The arrangement was announced this week alongside an interview Rooney conducted with Palestinian-Irish activist Samir Eskanda for The Guardian.<\/p>\n

Rooney\u2019s decision marks an unusual but not unprecedented attempt to work within the framework of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS<\/a>, which has long called on artists and cultural figures to avoid working with Israeli institutions it considers complicit in Israeli government policies toward Palestinians.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Rooney declined to sell the Hebrew translation rights to her novel \u201cBeautiful World, Where Are You?\u201d to the Israeli publisher that had previously published her books in Hebrew. At the time, she said she supported the BDS movement and would not work with an Israeli publisher unless it was willing to \u201cpublicly distance itself from apartheid and support the UN<\/a>-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n

That move prompted backlash in Israel and beyond, including calls to boycott Rooney\u2019s work. Israeli bookstore chains reportedly removed some of her books from shelves.<\/p>\n

\"SallySally Rooney speaks onstage during the Hulu Panel at Winter TCA 2020 at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 17, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (credit: Erik Voake\/Getty Images for Hulu)<\/p>\n

Now, Rooney, 35, says she believes publishing Intermezzo in Hebrew through November Books is compatible with the boycott campaign because the publisher does not operate in West Bank settlements, does not receive Israeli government funding, and has endorsed Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThough my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language,\u201d Rooney told The Guardian. \u201cI\u2019m very pleased that Intermezzo will soon be available in Hebrew with November Books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author remains in contact with BDS founding arm<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rooney added that she had stayed in contact with PACBI, a founding arm of the BDS movement that advises artists on cultural boycott issues, \u201cto try to ensure that I was upholding both the letter and the spirit of the institutional boycott.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haggai Matar, the executive director of +972, said BDS is willing to work with Israeli publishers if they express that they are not \u201ccomplicit\u201d with the Israeli state, do not accept government funding, nor operate within the settlements.<\/p>\n

BDS also demands that its targets recognize the rights of Palestinians under international law, including the right of return of Palestinians seeking to reclaim their former homes in modern-day Israel. While Israel and many of its supporters consider such claims an existential threat, Matar said it \u201ccan be implemented in all sorts of ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked why +972 was eager to help publish Rooney\u2019s book, Mattar told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was an opportunity to \u201cdispel myths that BDS is antisemitic or aimed at all Israelis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo take someone as famous as Sally and as outspoken on the Palestinian issue was a great opportunity to say, \u2018Look, Israelis aren\u2019t outcasts. This is not about our identity.\u2019 It is an attempt by Sally and the BDS movement to not be involved with organizations that are complicit with apartheid or war crimes. Once you act and say that you aren\u2019t, you are not subject to boycott at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since October 28, 2024, more than 7,000 writers have signed onto a boycott of \u201ccomplicit\u201d Israeli literary institutions. The boycott said it had evaluated 98 Israeli publishers and found that only November Books met its exemption criteria.<\/p>\n

November Books is a small Israeli nonprofit that distributes its books mostly through independent bookstores. It has previously published Hebrew translations of works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Naomi Klein, both of whom support the boycott.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur task as a movement is to channel anger at Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza<\/a> into the most meaningful initiatives,\u201d said Rooney. Israel denies that the war in Gaza is a genocide, and supporters have called the war in Gaza a proportionate response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed in Israel, and 251 were taken hostage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rooney also acknowledged what she described as inconsistencies in her earlier decisions. Rooney said that while she had supported BDS as a consumer, she had initially sold Hebrew translation rights for her first two novels to an Israeli publisher before concluding that mainstream Israeli cultural institutions were implicated in state policies she opposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time it came to selling the rights for my third book in 2021, things had changed,\u201d Rooney said. \u201cI had come to a better understanding of the complicity of the Israeli culture sector in that apartheid system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rooney\u2019s novels, nearly all of which are global bestsellers, have been translated into more than 40 languages and adapted for television by the BBC and Hulu.<\/p>\n

Jewish authors targeted since Oct. 7<\/strong><\/p>\n

The literary world has become a nasty, if bloodless, battleground since October 7. Jewish writers say they have been targeted as \u201cZionists\u201d even when their views on Israel aren\u2019t public, bookstores have canceled publicity events for Jewish authors, and it has become more difficult to publish works with Jewish themes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Rooney asserted that \u201cpeople\u201d had warned that her decision to boycott Israel would harm her career, suggesting to her that she \u201chad no idea what I was up against.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, I have gone on writing and publishing happily since 2021,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Matar rejects the criticism that the cultural boycott, by targeting the literary and artistic community, only harms politically liberal voices and their ability to shape public opinion.<\/p>\n

BDS, he told JTA, is a \u201cnonviolent tool asking a publisher \u2018to stand by us and not participate in our oppression.\u2019 These are very minimal demands, not silencing or too heavy a burden.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who drew headlines in 2021 for refusing a Hebrew translation of one of her…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":809089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[12648,26813,120976,56666,1022,70,99,50],"class_list":["post-809088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-antisemitism","tag-antizionism","tag-apartheid","tag-bds","tag-books","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116605108355313964","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}