Sally Rooney Publication INTERFERENCE in Hebrew has drawn understandable attention at a moment of profound political disaster: when decades of occupation and apartheid imposed on the Palestinians have turned into full-scale regional war and what I and many others consider a genocide in Gaza.
At a time like this, any cultural project associated with Israel inevitably raises difficult moral and political questions. Some will question whether cultural exchange should continue at all. Others will ask what it means for a writer publicly associated with the long-standing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to publish in Hebrew. These are serious questions and deserve serious answers.
A few years ago, friends of the binational media +972 magazine approached my wife and me with a proposition: would November Books be interested in publishing a Hebrew translation of Sally Rooney’s work if a way could be found to do so in accordance with the principles Rooney had publicly espoused since 2021?
In practice, this means distinguishing between cultural institutions that are materially or politically implicated in maintaining Israel’s system of occupation and those that are not. November Books was deemed compliant with BDS guidelines because it publicly opposes Israeli apartheid, supports Palestinian rights as defined under international law, does not receive funding from the Israeli government, and does not operate in settlements in the occupied territories.
We immediately said yes.
November Books is a small independent publishing house which, since its founding, has opposed Israel’s occupation of Palestine. We publish one or two books each year; books that we believe are important for the Israeli public to encounter, even when they challenge prevailing assumptions or are considered politically or commercially risky.
Over the years, we have published works including Colum McCann’s Apeirogon and Ilan Pappé Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine when other Israeli publishers did not want to bring those works into Hebrew. Publication of INTERFERENCE emerged from the same political and moral framework.
For years, Israelis have been told that support for BDS is motivated by hatred of Israelis, Jews, or Jewish culture itself. The Israeli government and most of the media insist that when writers or institutions support the boycott, they do so because they reject Israelis as people. The possibility that the boycott could instead be a response to the occupation is often dismissed before the argument is heard.
As Rooney said in her interview with Samir Eskanda, an Irish Palestinian activist, for Guardian: “For me, the act of translation is itself a beautiful ideal. Although my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I, of course, never boycotted the Hebrew language or any language.” Her objection was about institutional cooperation. This distinction is important.
The importance of this project is not that it proves that literature can somehow overcome politics. It is that she demonstrates, in practice, that Rooney’s position was never a rejection of Jews or Israelis as individuals, but a refusal to engage with institutions she considered complicit in crimes against the Palestinians.
Therefore, for us, the publication became an opportunity to make visible within Israeli society something that is often deliberately obscured or distorted: that the international boycott is a political response to state policies and institutions, not an expression of hatred towards people because of their nationality or language.
Some people will still believe that the publication of a major international literary novel in Hebrew risks restoring a sense of cultural normalcy during what we and they see as genocide. I understand this concern. But this project did not materialize despite Rooney’s support for the boycott; appeared because of her. The political conditions surrounding the publication are inseparable from the publication itself.
Indeed, the reaction within Israel has itself revealed many of these tensions. Recently, an Israeli fundraising platform took down our fundraising campaign after we stated that we will not distribute the book in settlements in the occupied territories. The controversy sparked public debate within Israel not only about the book, but about the occupation, boycott, and political conditions attached to the project. Since then we have been able to raise funds for the book through various channels. This matters.
I do not believe that a novel in itself changes the political reality. A Hebrew translation of INTERFERENCE it will not end Israel’s occupation or war crimes. But I also do not believe that any form of cultural exchange necessarily weakens political solidarity.
The frame here is the Palestinian-led BDS call itself, which defines the boycott in terms of institutional complicity rather than language or identity. The purpose of this publication was not to restore normalcy, but to confront Israeli readers with the reality that the boycott exists because of what the Israeli state is doing to the Palestinians.
The point is also to widen the path of BDS, allowing and encouraging more and more writers, artists, academics and others to join the movement in solidarity with the Palestinians, while still maintaining contact with Israeli dissidents, who are uncooperative and actively oppose their entire regime.
People will continue to disagree about the scope and strategy of the cultural boycott. This disagreement exists within every political movement. But if Israelis are now debating whether the boycott is a response to Israel’s actions, rather than simply hostility toward Israelis or Jews, and if we are approached by more authors seeking to join the movement—as we have been—then something meaningful has already happened beyond the publication of a single novel.
(Further reading: World War III is here)
