Simon & Schuster plans to publish a new novel by Susan Abulhawa, an author with a documented record of antisemitic posts and praise for terrorism, and she is openly taunting the critics trying to stop it.
Abulhawa announced the expanded partnership in a defiant video, mocking Jewish writers and editors who had spoken out against her earlier deal with the publishing giant. "The Zionists have missed or don't know, but Simon & Schuster will also be publishing my new novel," she said, adding that "Zionists are really mad." The video included digitally altered footage of her critics, set to foreboding music. Among those targeted: Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon, and John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary.
A Simon & Schuster spokeswoman confirmed the arrangement to the Washington Free Beacon, stating that the 2027 novel, titled The Sun Still Kisses Me, is part of a three-book deal signed in 2025. That deal also included the reprinting of two of Abulhawa's earlier novels through Simon & Schuster's Atria imprint. Current CEO Greg Greeley did not respond to the Free Beacon's requests for comment.
The publisher's decision to deepen its relationship with Abulhawa comes despite a growing record of posts that would end the career of virtually any other public figure in American life.
In September 2025, Abulhawa posted on X that "We live in the time of jewish supremacist demons" and called Jews a "cultureless, rootless human aberration." In a separate post that same month, she called a critic a "lying Jewish supremacist cockroach" and attacked what she termed "dual loyalty zionists," citing former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as an example.
By November 2025, she had escalated further. She referred to Israelis as "demonic parasite[s]" and declared that "Israel must be dismantled if humanity is going to have any chance at a moral future." In another post, she wrote, "We will have our revenge someday" against the "sons of satan."
Abulhawa also called Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people, "a spectacular moment" and praised Hamas fighters as "honorable" and "brave."
On July 25, well after her Simon & Schuster partnership was established, she posted a tribute to Kozo Okamoto, the last surviving participant in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre near Tel Aviv, which killed 26 people, including 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico. "Rest in power Comrade Kozo Okamoto," Abulhawa wrote. "You were an inspiration to all who knew you and all who knew of your heroic life. You were an embodiment of solidarity and love of the people."
She also pledged to donate preorder funds from her books to the Palestinian Youth Movement. Sen. Tom Cotton's office (R., Ark.) has reported that the organization "organizes events with the U.S. designated terrorist entity Samidoun" and has "close ties" to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, per the Israeli government.
Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt condemned the partnership in a post 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 added a broader warning:
"We're reaching a point where opposing antisemitism can carry a greater professional cost than promoting it."
Gerald Posner, a writer who publishes through Simon & Schuster, went further. In an article for The Free Press, Posner laid out the double standard plainly:
"There is no doubt that Simon & Schuster would never sign any celebrated novelist who had posted publicly that Muslims were parasites, vampires, demons, and ghouls."
Posner said the publisher "can publish whomever it likes" but added, "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."
Jonathan Karp, the former Simon & Schuster CEO who now heads the company's Simon Six imprint, left a comment on Posner's article. His statement: "Simon & Schuster unequivocally opposes antisemitism, racism, and all forms of bigotry." He also vowed that Abulhawa's books would go forward. The company offered no explanation for how those two positions fit together.
That gap, between the company's stated values and its business decisions, sits at the center of the controversy. Simon & Schuster says it opposes antisemitism. It is also expanding a publishing deal with a writer whose social media posts include the words "demons," "parasites," "cockroach," and "sons of satan," all directed at Jews. The company has not explained what, if anything, would cross a line.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, offered a public condemnation of Abulhawa when pressed at a March 13 press conference. "I think that that rhetoric is patently unacceptable," he said. "I think it's reprehensible."
But the Mamdani family's connections to Abulhawa extend well beyond casual awareness. The New York Post reported that the mayor's father, Mahmood Mamdani, serves alongside Abulhawa on the 29-person Gaza Tribunal Advisory Policy Council. Both of the mayor's parents co-signed a 2018 open letter with her. And Abulhawa was a featured speaker at Columbia University's Center for Palestine Studies, an institution associated with Mamdani's father.
New York City's first lady, Rama Duwaji, illustrated a group of essays that Abulhawa co-edited. The ADL noted the 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."
Mamdani's condemnation, in other words, arrived after years of documented family overlap with the very person he called reprehensible.
Posner's challenge to Simon & Schuster remains unanswered. No major American publisher would offer a three-book deal to a writer who called Muslims "parasites" and "demons," praised a massacre of Muslim pilgrims, and pledged donations to an organization linked to designated terrorist groups. That writer's career would end before the ink dried.
Abulhawa, a Kuwait-born author who lives in a five-bedroom home in the Philadelphia suburbs, faces no such consequences. She has a new novel on the way, a publishing house backing her, and a video mocking the people who object. Simon & Schuster has issued a statement opposing bigotry in the abstract while financing it in the specific.
Greenblatt's warning deserves a second read. When promoting antisemitism carries fewer professional consequences than opposing it, the institutions that claim to stand against hate have already made their choice, and it is not the one printed in their corporate statements.
