Simon & Schuster plans to rerelease two novels by Susan Abulhawa, an author with a long public record of calling Jews "demons," "parasites," and "cockroaches", even as the publisher insists it "unequivocally opposes antisemitism."
The publisher's Atria imprint announced in July that it would bring back Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin and The Blue Between Sky and Water on September 29, praising her "signature lyrical voice." A press release made no mention of the author's extensive history of antisemitic posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, posts she has never retracted or softened.
The deal drew immediate condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, from at least one of Simon & Schuster's own authors, and from French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has described Mornings in Jenin as "a concentration of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish clichés masquerading as fiction." But the publisher, one of the "Big Five" houses that dominate English-language book publishing, has refused to reverse course, and for weeks ignored multiple requests for comment from the Washington Free Beacon.
When a statement finally came, it went not to the Free Beacon but to Gerald Posner, a Simon & Schuster author who was preparing an essay on the controversy for The Free Press. Jonathan Karp, the publisher's former CEO, a 16-year company veteran who now heads the Simon Six imprint, issued three sentences that tried to split the difference between principle and profit.
Karp told Posner:
"Simon & Schuster unequivocally opposes antisemitism, racism, and all forms of bigotry. We remain committed to publishing a broad range of voices and viewpoints. Susan Abulhawa's personal views are her own and are not reflective of Atria Books, Simon & Schuster, or its employees."
Current CEO Greg Greeley said nothing. KKR, the private equity firm that purchased Simon & Schuster in October 2023, said nothing. Both of KKR's co-CEOs, Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall, were emailed a detailed list of Abulhawa's past statements. Neither responded.
Posner was not satisfied. He threatened to leave the publisher entirely.
"Simon & Schuster can publish whomever it likes. It doesn't mean its authors have to reflexively support that decision. If it stands by Abulhawa's noxious views, I will sadly look for another publisher. And I hope that other authors might do the same."
He added that there was "no doubt that Simon & Schuster would never sign any celebrated novelist who had posted publicly that Muslims were parasites, vampires, demons, and ghouls." That observation sits at the center of the controversy: the publisher's willingness to tolerate from one direction what it would never tolerate from another.
Abulhawa, born in Kuwait and now living outside Philadelphia, has built a long public trail of statements that go well beyond criticism of Israel. In September 2025, she posted on X that "We live in the time of jewish supremacist demons," adding that Jews were a "cultureless, rootless human aberration." In a separate September 2025 post, she called a critic a "lying Jewish supremacist cockroach" and attacked "dual loyalty zionists," citing former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as an example.
By November 2025, she had called Israelis "demonic parasites" and declared that "Israel must be dismantled if humanity is going to have any chance at a moral future." Another post warned, "We will have our revenge someday," directed at the "sons of satan."
As recently as July 31, less than two weeks before the Free Beacon report, Abulhawa declared the Holocaust had "lost its meaning" and that "the whole world is sick of hearing about it." She added: "There is an extreme overrepresentation of Jews in every branch of government, media, and culture."
She has never once moderated or walked back any of these statements. Simon & Schuster's own author page still describes her as a "poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist."
ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt posted a sharp response on X:
"Susan Abulhawa, an unabashed antisemite who traffics in antisemitic tropes and glorifies terrorism gets a book deal. Meanwhile, Jewish authors increasingly face campaigns to boycott, blacklist, and silence them, while bookstores, festivals, and other cultural institutions face pressure to exclude or distance themselves from Jewish and Zionist voices."
Greenblatt went further: "We're reaching a point where opposing antisemitism can carry a greater professional cost than promoting it." Coming from the head of a major civil rights organization, that is a damning assessment of the cultural moment, and of the institutions enabling it.
The publisher's record on controversial authors is selective, and the pattern runs in one direction. In January 2021, Simon & Schuster canceled Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book The Tyranny of Big Tech after the Capitol riot, citing "our larger public responsibility as citizens." Hawley's book contained no slurs, no dehumanizing language, no calls for revenge. Regnery published it instead. Hawley's office did not respond to a request for comment on the Abulhawa deal.
In 2017, the publisher pulled a book by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos after he made comments questioning age-of-consent laws. Simon & Schuster had already come under heavy pressure from its liberal writer corps for giving Yiannopoulos a six-figure advance, in part because he had said that "feminism is cancer." That book was eventually self-published.
Go back further: in 1990, Simon & Schuster canceled Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho over its graphic depiction of violence against women. Random House picked it up. The novel is now considered one of the most influential of its era.
In each of those cases, the publisher acted swiftly under public pressure. Abulhawa's case is different. The pressure has arrived. The publisher has heard it. And it has chosen to proceed.
The author's connections reach into New York City politics. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, publicly denounced Abulhawa as "reprehensible" during a March 13 press conference. But the distance Mamdani tried to create is hard to square with his family's documented ties to her. The New York Post reported that Mamdani's father, Mahmood Mamdani, serves alongside Abulhawa on the 29-person Gaza Tribunal Advisory Policy Council. Both of Mamdani's parents co-signed a 2018 open letter alongside Abulhawa. And the mayor's wife, Rama Duwaji, who has separately drawn scrutiny for using a racial slur and for celebrating October 7, provided illustrations for an essay in an anthology co-edited by Abulhawa and published by Simon & Schuster.
The ADL condemned that connection directly, stating that "Rama Duwaji, the First Lady of New York City, chose to illustrate and attach her name to a project by a woman who has a long history of celebrating terror and demonizing Jews."
Abulhawa's books are not the only titles drawing scrutiny at Simon & Schuster's Atria imprint. The same week as the Free Beacon report, Atria released Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power. Simon & Schuster released a promotional video in which the book's authors describe Israel as "a toxic issue."
And the publisher recently put out Great and Unfortunate Things, a memoir by Jason Arday, a former Cambridge professor who was forced to give up his position after being publicly exposed for making unsubstantiated claims. Simon & Schuster performed what the Free Beacon described as "significant cleanup" before publication, scrubbing references to Arday's Cambridge title from the book's Amazon page and dropping a comparison to Tara Westover's Educated. Yet the publisher's own author page still calls the book "a powerful story for our moment" and still refers to Arday as "Professorial Chair of Education."
A publisher willing to quietly scrub a disgraced author's credentials while leaving the marketing language intact is a publisher that understands the problem, and has decided the problem is manageable.
Simon & Schuster was founded by Jewish publishers. It is now owned by KKR, a private equity giant whose leadership will not say a word about an author who calls Jews "cockroaches" and "demons." Karp's statement, three sentences of boilerplate about opposing bigotry while defending the bigot's book deal, is the only official response the company has produced.
The publisher had no trouble finding its voice when it canceled Hawley's book within days of January 6. It had no trouble finding its voice when it dropped Yiannopoulos under pressure from its own staff. It found its voice when it pulled American Psycho in 1990.
When the bigotry points at Jews, Simon & Schuster finds something else: a commitment to publishing "a broad range of voices and viewpoints."
Posner had it right. No major publisher would touch an author who called Muslims "parasites" or "demons." The standard exists. It just doesn't apply equally, and everyone involved knows it.
