Sally Rooney’s boycott of Israel publishers gets backing of 70 writers
(JTA) — Seventy notable writers and publishers including Rachel Kushner, Francisco Goldman and Eileen Myles have signed a letter supporting Irish novelist Sally Rooney in her refusal to have her third novel translated into Hebrew by an Israeli publisher.
The letter calls Rooney’s boycott of Israeli publishers “an exemplary response to the mounting injustices inflicted on Palestinians.”
Rooney published her newest novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” in September, but wouldn’t accept an offer to sell the Hebrew translation rights to Modan, the Israeli publisher responsible for putting out her first two novels in Israel. She said she was refusing to do further business with Modan out of support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, a Palestinian initiative against Israeli rule.
In response, Israel’s largest booksellers decided to remove Rooney’s earlier novels from their shelves. The two books, which were popular in Israel, will no longer be available in the 200 retail locations of bookstores chains Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim nor on the chains’ websites.
On Nov. 22, a pro-Palestinian group called Artists for Palestine UK announced it had organized a letter of support for Rooney with a list of signatories from the United States and Great Britain.
“Like her, we will continue to respond to the Palestinian call for effective solidarity, just as millions supported the campaign against apartheid in South Africa,” the letter said. “We will continue to support the nonviolent Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.”
In defending Rooney, the letter said that Modan markets texts published by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and cited a Human Rights Watch report from April that Israel is guilty of instituting a regime of “apartheid.”
—
The post Sally Rooney’s boycott of Israel publishers gets backing of 70 writers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
