Lee Child against colleagues who boycott the Jewish state (and the Hamas hostages)

Eli Sharabi emerged from a tunnel in Gaza without his wife and daughters, who had been killed by Hamas. For 491 days, Sharabi was held underground, chained, starved, tortured and humiliated. When he was released, Sharabi weighed 44 kilos. A leading British agent has now revealed that no UK publisher has agreed to publish the memoir of the former Hamas hostage. Neil Blair, who also represents J.K. Rowling, told The Times he was “stunned”. “I assume none of them even bothered to read it; it is an extraordinary work, comparable to some of the most significant texts on the Holocaust.”

Not even "Howl", the satirical novel by Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson about Jews in the diaspora following 7 October, has managed to find a publisher in the United States. This boycott began in 2024, when more than a thousand writers, including Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy, pledged never to collaborate with Israeli publishers, festivals or agents. Who has spoken out against it? First Rowling, and now Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher series. Child has described the boycott of Israeli cultural institutions as “hypocritical”. He claimed that Rooney would be “absolutely appalled” if anyone were to call for a boycott of Irish writers. But according to Sean Thomas of The Telegraph, there is a sordid reason behind this dichotomy. The difference lies not in talent, but in dependence.

“Most novelists aren’t as rich as Sally Rooney. The average novelist is poor: seven thousand pounds a year from writing, and their future earnings are doled out by a priesthood of a few hundred people – juries, festivals, creative writing departments. Or, as a publishing veteran recently put it: ‘The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian’. So, even if you don’t want to, if you write these sophisticated books you have to bow down. You dutifully sign the pro-Palestinian pledge.” Rowling and Child, no. “They don’t answer to the Guardian or the BBC, but to the bored traveller popping into WHSmith at the airport. They don’t have to curry favour with the establishment, even if they’re as left-wing as Lee Child.” And besides, no one has ever seen Jack Reacher take a knee.