Sally Rooney's stance on Palestine is courageous and humane

The determination of this ordinary people's writer to support the Palestinian cause, even if it means her books have been pulled from sale in Britain, mocks British terrorism laws. Sally Rooney walked into this mess with her eyes open: last July she said that the royalties from her books and their BBC adaptations,

It's hard to think of an author who would risk arrest for his political views in Britain, it's hard to think of an author whose books would be published anywhere but here. Sally Rooney went into the debacle with her eyes wide open: she said last July that royalties from her books and their BBC adaptations were being used to support Palestine Action.

Rooney's bravery isn't in danger of jail because there's a solution to that, which he's doing - avoiding Britain. Rather, he has chosen the most thorny possible way for this. Writers can write articles and sign letters in support of the Palestinian people. Actors can say it in interviews, musicians can say it on stage, and there's always a cost to it, whether it's in the public eye and launching a world tour, or behind closed doors and simply being denied opportunities. But such actions, even if logically suggestive of support for a proscribed organization, do not constitute an active violation of terrorism laws. Rooney had taken a financial hit anyway by pledging to support the Palestinian cause with his royalties. But this is the price you can count on at least. The sales and lost opportunities that are effectively barred and banned in the UK are countless.

Rooney has never been an apolitical writer, and now he embraces the idea that caring about Gaza is somehow a traitor's life choice.

However, speaking not as he-an-accountant, but as someone who lives in the culture he also lives in and has such an impact on his description, it is similarly difficult to put a price on the value of his position. His authorial voice and collection of works distinguish this intervention in its scope. He has never been an apolitical writer. Ordinary people used razors in class, conversations with friends did not shy away from Marxist analysis. But the work is also intimate, often homely, I mean the clue in the name - these were always normal people. Due to his reputation for being very challenging but everyday elegance, Rooney took the position and, in doing so, accepted the idea that caring about Gaza was somehow a traitor's life choice. It was a human response, he insisted, as natural and ordinary, passionate and important, as friendship.

Also, let's—certainly in some cases we're allowed to say this—makes a mockery of terrorism law as it is applied. No one anywhere thinks Sally Rooney is a danger to the British state or any state, just as no one anywhere thinks a 94-year-old human rights lawyer who was a friend of Ed Miliband's late mother does. Keir Starmer, paradoxically, has painted himself into an absurd corner with two things going in his favor: caution and his own legal territory, where terrorist arrests between 2024 and 2025 have risen from 250 to nearly 3,000. In the demos where everyone was crunching the numbers, there were more than 80 rather than less than 20.

The history and nature of Ireland's solidarity with the Palestinian cause has been much debated since Ed Sheeran's painful tour in which the singer thought he could quietly drop a pro-Palestinian song without losing his backing group - Beoga, the founder of Irish Artists for Palestine. More broadly, Ireland has a vibrant tradition of young women who have no reason to think they have the right to comment on the geopolitics they row their oars to anyway. The Dunnes strike in 1984 began when 21-year-old Mary Manning refused to manage a batch of South African grapefruit, which cost her £21 a week in 80s money. It reached its political peak less than three years later when Ireland banned South African goods altogether in protest against apartheid. However, in the meantime, in 1985, Desmond Tutu met Manning and his fellow strikers on his way to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and while he invited them to meet him in South Africa - where they took him, they turned him away at the border. There is an immediate echo here of a government flaunting its strength in customs to draw attention to its weakness. And the writer, who is also an ordinary citizen, whose lost royalties are hardly the least casualty, but still a powerful icon.