Brendan O’Neill, a Telegraph columnist and Trump apologist, has once again attacked best-selling author Sally Rooney for her “god-complex” in defending Palestinian rights. The Canary reports O’Neill’s latest assault frames Rooney’s pro-Palestine stance as performative, dismissing her objections to Israel’s actions in Gaza and ignoring her activism while deriding her literary success. O’Neill’s rhetoric, however, is not a novel critique but part of a years-long vendetta, with The Canary linking him to three prior attacks on Rooney and mocking his “obsession with imagined wit.”
This saga illuminates a broader pattern: right-wing media’s weaponization of anti-intellectualism to delegitimize Palestinian advocacy. O’Neill’s piece is endorsed by figures like Eylon Levy, the ex-Israeli government spokesperson whose “genocide denial” cost him his job, and Jake Wallis Simons, a Jewish Chronicle editor accused of amplifying Israel’s narrative. By associating Rooney with a “luxury belief” in Palestinian freedom, O’Neill mimics the state-aligned rhetoric of critics who deny Israeli war crimes. Crucially, his claims ignore UN reports, human rights groups, and even Israeli officials like Yoav Gallant, who admitted Israel executed the “Hannibal directive” to kill its own citizens days before 7 October 2023.
The primary and related coverage diverge in framing. The Canary emphasizes O’Neill’s ideological alignment with anti-Palestinian forces, citing endorsements from figures complicit in Israel’s propaganda. Democracy Now! meanwhile covers parallel dynamics in U.S. politics, reporting Joe Kent’s resignation from Trump’s administration over the Iran war, which he blamed on pressure from “Israel and its American lobby.” Both stories reveal a shared structure: powerful actors framing dissent as partisan, while marginalizing critique of violence.
O’Neill’s attacks are part of a deliberate strategy to conflate literary achievement with political morality, turning cultural influence into a proxy war. By targeting Rooney, a prominent intellectual who avoids the public sphere, he undermines her credibility and shifts focus from systemic injustice to personal integrity. This tactic mirrors how Israeli apartheid defenders target critics with performative moralism, as seen in Kent’s resignation, where the war on Iran was justified to appease domestic and international lobbies.
Coverage omits key questions: How do platforms like the Telegraph profit from hosting ideological warriors like O’Neill? What role do literary figures play in global political movements, and when does critique of their work become a distraction from the issues they champion? The Canary’s reliance on left-wing talking points risks recycling dogma rather than interrogating Rooney’s arguments or O’Neill’s sources.
The trajectory of this conflict hinges on two developments: first, whether Trump’s Iran escalation—exposed by Kent’s resignation—will force a reckoning in U.S. foreign policy, and second, whether cultural figures like Rooney can maintain solidarity with Palestinian movements without falling into the traps O’Neill sets. Both outcomes depend on public pressure to hold power accountable, not to reduce complex issues to ideological scraps.