Atria Books, a prestigious imprint of Simon & Schuster, has agreed to republish two novels by Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa, an author whose social media history includes calling Jews "ghouls," "cockroaches," "demons," and worse.
The publisher's spokeswoman, Jessica Laino, sent a press release to the Washington Free Beacon in July praising Abulhawa's "signature lyrical voice" and "nuanced characters." Atria plans to rerelease her novels Mornings in Jenin and The Blue Between Sky and Water on September 29, 2026. Neither Simon & Schuster nor its parent company, the private equity firm KKR, responded to requests for comment about Abulhawa's public statements.
Those statements are not ambiguous. They are not buried in old archives. And they keep coming.
In September 2025, Abulhawa posted on X that Israel is a "cultureless, rootless human aberration in the form of a manufactured 'nation.'" In the same month, she wrote that "we live in the time of jewish supremacist demons" and called a pro-Israel commentator a "lying Jewish supremacist cockroach." She also complained about "Dual loyalty zionists."
By November 2025, she had described Israelis as "demonic parasite[s]" and declared that "Israel must be dismantled if humanity is going to have any chance at a moral future." A separate November post addressed "sons of satan" and promised, "we will have our revenge someday."
In December 2025, she called Israelis "rootless, soulless ghouls."
None of this slowed down the deal. And Abulhawa did not stop posting after the agreement was reached.
On July 24, 2026, after the press release had already been drafted, Abulhawa posted on X:
"The way zios keep boasting about the extraordinary power they wield reminds me of how they also boasted and took credit for Germany's defeat in the First World War that culminated in the Treaty of Versailles and led to the rise of extreme anti-Jewish sentiment. History will rhyme."
The post now carries a community note informing users that it repeats the Nazi-era conspiracy theory blaming Jews for Germany's World War I defeat, a claim that was central to the propaganda used to justify the Holocaust.
One day later, on July 25, Abulhawa posted a tribute to Kozo Okamoto, the last surviving participant of the 1972 Lod Airport attack in Tel Aviv, which killed 26 people, 17 of them Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico. She wrote:
"Rest in power Comrade Kozo Okamoto. 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 praised the man who helped carry out a mass killing of civilians as an "embodiment of solidarity." Simon & Schuster still had nothing to say.
On July 31, Abulhawa declared that the Holocaust had "lost its meaning" and that "the whole world is sick of hearing about it." In the same post, she wrote:
"These clowns invoke that genocide with every perceived slight. There is an extreme overrepresentation of Jews in every branch of government, media, and culture."
That post went up less than two months before the scheduled release of her books under the Atria imprint, the same house that publishes Colleen Hoover, Brad Thor, Janet Evanovich, and Philippa Gregory.
Abulhawa's name surfaced in New York City politics earlier this year when it emerged that Rama Duwaji, wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had illustrated an essay published in a project Abulhawa co-edited. The essay appeared in Everything Is Political, a publication by Slow Factory, a self-described environmental and social justice nonprofit. Mamdani addressed the connection at a March 13 press conference, calling Abulhawa's rhetoric "patently unacceptable" and "reprehensible." He claimed Duwaji did not know about Abulhawa's postings.
But the connections between Abulhawa and the Mamdani family extend well beyond one illustrated essay. The New York Post reported that the mayor's father, Mahmood Mamdani, sits alongside Abulhawa on the 29-person Advisory Policy Council of the Gaza Tribunal. The mayor's parents also co-signed a 2018 open letter with Abulhawa urging Saudi Arabia to release a women's rights activist. The Anti-Defamation League noted that Duwaji "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 claim that his family barely knew Abulhawa does not hold up well against the record. Multiple family members have overlapped with her in public advocacy over a period of years.
Abulhawa's record did not begin with these social media posts. Prior Free Beacon reporting documented that she called the Hamas attack of October 7 "a spectacular moment" and attacked "Jewish Supremacist Vampires." Those reports were public well before Atria Books extended its offer.
Simon & Schuster had every opportunity to review Abulhawa's public statements before signing the deal. Her posts were not hidden. They were not deleted. Many remain live on X, visible to anyone who searches her name. The publisher chose to move forward and then sent a press release celebrating her prose style.
The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. But the reputational cost is already clear. A major American publishing house, owned by one of the world's largest private equity firms, is lending its brand to an author who dehumanizes Jews in language that echoes some of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century, and who continues to do so while the ink on the contract is still fresh.
Neither Simon & Schuster nor KKR responded to the Free Beacon's requests for comment. Abulhawa herself has not publicly addressed the controversy around the deal.
The press release praised her "nuanced characters." Her own words, posted freely and repeatedly on a public platform, suggest she sees an entire people not as characters at all, but as parasites, demons, and cockroaches. Simon & Schuster read those words and reached for a contract.
When a publisher rewards conduct like this, the message to every other author watching is unmistakable: some hatreds still have a market.
