Rooney is more specific in her own statement, which her agent sent to WELT: It is about “Palestine Action”, a militant protest group that the British government had banned as a terrorist organization in July 2025. Rooney is one of her loudest supporters and has promised to donate all royalties from her works in the UK to her. “I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions and am fully prepared to face the consequences,” she said.
“What else could make our lives bearable?”
In 2014, Rooney discovered the topic of Palestine in Dublin. She was 23 years old at the time, she explained in an interview in the Guardian. War was raging in the Middle East: Hamas members had kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers, the Jewish state responded with attacks and arrests, to which the Islamist terrorist organization responded with rocket fire - which resulted in a 50-day war in Gaza.
It was clear to young Rooney who was to blame. She took to the streets against the Jewish state in the Irish capital, a hotbed of anti-Israel protests. “That moment of horror and outrage was a formative experience for me – both as a person and as a writer,” she said.
Rooney's campaign against Israel seems to have everything to do with herself. Speaking at an anti-Israel convention in March this year, she said of her motivation: "What else could make our lives bearable in times as dark as these? What else, in the face of such horror, could give us a reason to carry on, to stave off despair, to live at peace with ourselves and to fight for our future, no matter what the consequences?" Those who, like her, have the privilege of a public platform should see it as the “honor of our lives” to stand with Palestine.
As if BDS were some kind of high priest
How their activism actually helps the Palestinians is questionable. Above all, it consists of supporting the BDS boycott movement, which has been criticized as anti-Semitic. Rooney signed the relevant letters and rejected any cooperation with Israeli cultural institutions.
One of their main achievements so far has been to drive literary festivals in Edinburgh and Hay almost to financial ruin after they and other authors called for a broad boycott against them because of a sponsor, an investment company, which they accused with flimsy evidence of links to “apartheid, occupation and genocide of Israel” and to oil companies. The sponsor then withdrew, leaving a gaping financial gap.
Rooney caused an uproar in 2021 when she prevented a Hebrew translation of her novel “Beautiful World, Where Are You” (published in German as “Schöne Welt, wo bist du”) on moral grounds. In the same Guardian interview, a conversation with a BDS activist, she regretted that she had not done this with previous works: There were no clear BDS guidelines for writers at the time, she complains, but she should have asked the movement itself. Almost as if BDS were some kind of high priest that you ask for permission and absolution. “Intermezzo” has now been published in Hebrew, by a publisher that is kosher for the BDS movement – and in close coordination with the boycotters.
The fact that Rooney now supports “Palestine Action” financially must be seen as further radicalization. Since 2020, the group has been involved in at least 385 criminal damage cases in the UK. Activists also attacked Jewish businesses in an Orthodox neighborhood, accusing them of having ties to Israel and being complicit in a genocide in Gaza.
It does not shy away from violence: During a break-in at a site belonging to the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems UK in 2024, activists rammed through security fences with an old prison van, they were armed with axes and crowbars. And they crushed a policewoman's spine with a sledgehammer.
“Then so be it.”
After Palestine Action activists broke into a British air force base last year and damaged two military planes by spraying paint on the engines and crowbarring the planes, Rooney praised the activists, once again in The Guardian: "What are people of conscience to do in the face of state support for genocide?" she wrote in an op-ed. “Real political resistance has always involved deliberate violations of the law.”
The damage amounted to eight million euros. The action led to the classification as a terrorist organization. A controversial decision by the left-wing Labor government, which is hotly debated in the country and is still being challenged in court. But one that still exists today. And that is now becoming a problem for Rooney.
There's probably some calculation behind it. “I, too, support Palestine Action,” she proudly announced in a guest article in the Irish Times last August. “If that makes me a ‘terror supporter’ under British law, then so be it.” Her books would continue to be published and sold in Britain, at least for now, she wrote at the time.
Now follows the predictable consequence of a conscious provocation. Rooney has boycotted herself, she has practically banned herself. This hasn't done her any harm so far. The move has led to “panic buying” of her novels, the Irish Times reports. They are now said to be sold out in some bookstores in Belfast, Northern Ireland. On the British Amazon site, her novels, including the older ones, are again among the top 500 books in all categories. Business is booming.
