American Katie Kitamura, Swedish Fredrik Backman, British Max Porter, Pulitzer Prize winners Jhumpa Lahiri and Hisham Matar have one thing in common: they are well known Western novelists who don’t want their books translated into Hebrew.
Before the current war, there were one or two cases a year of writers refusing Hebrew translation for political reasons. The first was Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple. Today, there are countless. Like the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, South Korean Han Kang.
Before the current war, there were one or two cases a year of writers refusing Hebrew translation for political reasons.
Since winning the Nobel, Kang has been contacted by several Israeli publishers. Her agent’s letter in response to the latest request from Yoav Reiss, the Israeli publisher of Persimmon, reads: “Kang does not wish her work to be presented in Israel.” As Chilean Isabel Allende has just decided.
Then there are renowned writers, like Irish writer Sally Rooney, who go from refusing to be translated into Hebrew to defending guerrilla warfare against Jewish businesses. A Jewish business in Stamford Hill, London, was vandalized, its windows smashed, its doors and walls daubed with red paint, by Palestine Action, the pressure group Rooney raves about in the Guardian (“I admire and support Palestine Action wholeheartedly and will continue to do so even if it becomes a terrorist act”).
Keir Starmer’s government has just listed Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
You’re nobody in Western literary high society if you don’t wear a keffiyeh.
Salman Rushdie’s stamina (“if there were a Palestinian state, it would be similar to that of the Taliban”) and Michel Houellebecq’s serotonin (“if Israel stops fighting, it will disappear”) are very rare in Western literary circles.
German novelist Maxim Biller explains this in an article in Zeit. Biller’s article, titled “Morbus Israel,” was removed from the site after the controversy.
Then there are renowned writers, like Irish writer Sally Rooney, who go from refusing to be translated into Hebrew to defending guerrilla warfare against Jewish businesses.
Biller attacks the good Westerners who transform Israelis into “medieval child murderers and modern-day war criminals.” “Apologists for Islam,” writes Biller, people whose ideal Jew is the “stunted and educated one who politely presents himself before the gas chamber or who the Iranian Revolutionary Guard turns into atomic dust.”
In Valiasr Square, Teheran, in October 2023, a giant banner was erected showing masses of Muslims walking in the distance toward Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. It was a representation of Jerusalem’s “liberation” from Jewish control, a liberation seemingly imminent in the wake of the October 7 Hamas invasion and massacre in southern Israel.
This is also the dark desire of these humanitarian, democratic, compassionate, liberal, peace-loving Western writers who, after the world is “free from the Jews” of the Nazis, would like a “world free from Israel.”
Published originally on July 20, 2025.
