Veterans in the Israeli publishing industry were surprised by Irish novelist Sally Rooney’s decision not to allow her latest book to be translated in to Hebrew by an Israeli publisher. Not just because she had raised no objections to the translation of her previous two novels, but because such a case is so rare.
It’s not that Israeli publishers are unaware of the boycott movement. On the contrary, they are one of the very few sectors in Israel who find themselves having to deal with it regularly, from inviting authors from abroad to literary festivals. But having a best-selling Western author actually refusing the translation of their books is extremely rare (anti-normalization Arab authors, who rarely allow Israeli firms to buy translation rights, are another matter).
The only vaguely similar cases anyone seems to remember are with the antisemitic American conspiracy theorist and poet Alice Walker, who refused point-blank, and Canadian activist, writer Naomi Klein who insisted that the only Israeli publisher kosher enough for her “The Shock Doctrine” was a now defunct company which specialized in translating Arabic literature.
Much of the furore over Rooney’s boycott initially focused on whether she’s boycotting the Hebrew language, and if not, as she claims, how exactly does she expect to be published in Hebrew if she’s boycotting Israeli publishers, and does all that make her an antisemite.
But there hasn’t been enough attention to what she actually thinks she’ll achieve. After all, words are the most basic form of human expression and protest. Repressive regimes routinely try to suppress words. For a writer to insist on withholding their own words is a rather curious course to take.
If the BDS movement’s aims, to which Rooney professes to adhere, is to put pressure on Israel to fundamentally change its character, then why would nixing access by Israelis to the work of one of its high-profile pro-Palestinian supporters help?
Assuming Rooney hopes that her readers will, through her books, become better and more conscientious people, wouldn’t that be her preferred outcome for Israelis as well? Who knows, maybe they’d even realize the error of their ways.
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Sam Leith, literary editor of The Spectator, put it very well in an essay on the UnHerd site: “[T]here’s no soft-power blow that withdrawing her book strikes to the prestige of the Israeli regime… they couldn’t give a toss which of their citizens get to read about the tangled love-lives and troubled consciences of Rooney’s protagonists.”
But simply accusing Rooney of performing an empty virtue-signal, which she is, is too easy. We’re all guilty of exactly the same sin to various degrees, especially those of us who write for a living.
What’s really telling about this episode is that increasingly the discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian isn’t about actual issues anymore, it’s about words. It’s become a discourse about the discourse. What’s happening on the ground and what, if anything, can be done to change the situation, has become secondary to the words we use to describe it.
If the BDS movement aims to pressure Israel to fundamentally change its character, then why would nixing access by Israelis to the work of a high-profile pro-Palestinian supporter help? AP Photo/Amr Nabil
The conflict over how to talk and write about the conflict is not new, of course. Golda Meir’s questionable legacy includes among other things the argument over whether or not to even use the word “Palestinians,” whom she insisted did not exist. Some on the right make a point of calling them just “Arabs” to this day.
Golda was wrong, and a writer has an obligation to respect human beings and call them what they prefer to be called. But so often today it’s a third party who insists on dictating terms.
Take the demand from some quarters to use “Palestinian citizens of Israel” rather than “Arab Israeli” despite polling evidence that most Palestinian citizens of Israel prefer to describe themselves as Arab Israelis.
Words of course have immense power, but just like any weapon, they can also become obsolete very quickly. Witness the breathtaking self-importance found in how two NGOs, B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, issued announcements in recent months that Israel now qualified as an apartheid state.
The reports came out and absolutely nothing changed. Some people were calling Israel an Apartheid long ago. Other people still won’t call it Apartheid, and that’s it. It has about as much relevance to people’s lives as whether the rather ugly building operated by the United States government in south Jerusalem is called an “embassy” or a “consulate.”
For a certain strand of the anti-Israel lobby, the word “apartheid” is no longer powerful enough. They’ve even taken HRW to task for having the temerity to publish a report which suggests that Hamas’ firing of rockets on Israeli citizens could be considered “war crimes.” After all, how can a Palestinian organization be blamed for using what rudimentary weapons it has against a ‘racist entity’ bent on carrying out a ‘genocide’ of the Palestinian people?
At the current rate of rhetorical escalation, one feels that HRW will come around to that view in a few years, when they realize their “apartheid” campaign has achieved nothing, and upgrade it to at least “ethnic cleansing.”
All this fighting over what words we can and can’t use misses the point that in an age where everyone has a platform to bombard us with words, they very quickly lose their power to shock. Inflation will always lead to depreciation.
A demonstration held by right-wing nationalists from Im Tirtzu on Nakba Day, holding placards with the slogan: ‘Nakba – nonsense,’ ‘Nakba day – Falsehood day’ Moti Milrod
Ten years ago, the Netanyahu government waged a war against the word “Nakba,” passing a law allowing the finance minister to cut funding from any institution commemorating Israel’s independence day as a day of mourning.
Of course, it didn’t work and today the concept of the Nakba, of Israel’s founding being a disaster for the Palestinians, is much more present in Israeli discourse. But the Israeli right wing shouldn’t have been concerned. The change in discourse hasn’t changed Israelis’ political views. If anything, it’s hardened them, the same way the Israeli right fought for decades against the word “occupation,” another battle they lost. But they won anyway, because the occupation is still here to stay.
And lest I’m accused of the new sin of “bothsiderism,” let’s make it clear that it’s not only the extremists and radicals on both sides who are wasting everyone’s timing by abusing words.
The centrists in this debate who pathetically continue to pay homage to the empty motto of the “two-state solution” are just as guilty. Not that the two-states concept is a bad one, but to think that where things stand right now a “solution” is at all conceivable is no more than a self-deceiving cop-out. There’s no solution. Just hollow words.
We’ve become so focused on the words that we’ve lost sight of the fact that no matter how valiantly we fight for them, they’re having less and less effect. The world has lost interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ramping up the words won’t bring the world back.
Words are very important. I make my living through writing words. But words are there to serve a purpose. They’re not a purpose unto themselves. Something Sally Rooney, who is so in love with her words that she thinks denying them will make a change, seems to not realize.
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