Short answer: Salman Rushdie has made no formal declaration of support for Israel. He has no known visits, donations, or Jewish-identity ties to the country, and he was born into a Muslim family in India (he now describes himself as an atheist). Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, though, he has repeatedly and by name criticized Hamas, warned that a Palestinian state run by Hamas today would likely become "Taliban-like" and an Iranian client state, and publicly declined to join the literary world's boycott of Israeli and Jewish writers. He reads as sympathetic to Israel's security concerns and firmly anti-Hamas, not as a declared supporter of Israel as a cause. As of August 2026.
What Salman Rushdie has actually said and done
- October 20, 2023: At a Frankfurt Book Fair press conference, Rushdie said he was "filled with horror about the attack by Hamas" on October 7 and "filled with foreboding about what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu might do in return," calling for "a cessation in hostilities at the earliest point," according to France 24 (AFP wire).
- May 9, 2024: A viral crowdsourced spreadsheet ranking authors as "Zionist," "anti-Zionist," or "unclear" for boycott purposes listed Rushdie as "unclear," noting he had taken part in a Gaza-related charity effort but had also spoken at PEN America events, an organization boycott activists opposed because it would not exclude Jewish members, as reported by the Times of Israel and JTA.
- May 19, 2024: In an interview with the German tabloid Bild, Rushdie said that if a Palestinian state existed today "it would be run by Hamas, and that would make it a Taliban-like state, and it would be a client state of Iran," while reaffirming he has "argued for a Palestinian state for most of my life, since the 1980s," per the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post.
- May 19, 2024: In the same round of remarks, Rushdie called it "very strange for a young progressive student politics to kind of support a fascist terrorist group," referring to campus protesters who he said avoided naming Hamas, while also saying "any normal person can only be shocked by what is happening in Gaza right now" and warning that some protests were sliding into antisemitism, according to Swarajya, citing the Bild/RBB interview.
- October 2024: When more than 1,000 authors, including Sally Rooney, Naomi Klein, and Percival Everett, signed a Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions deemed complicit in the Gaza war, Rushdie's name does not appear on the signatory list, which is consistent with his earlier public rejection of a blanket cultural boycott of Israel. The letter itself is covered by Truthout.
The fuller picture
Rushdie was born in 1947 in Bombay (Mumbai), India, into a middle-class Kashmiri Muslim family. He has said he is now "a hard-line atheist" and has no reported Jewish ancestry or Jewish-identity connection. There is no record of him visiting Israel, donating to an Israeli or pro-Israel cause, or appearing at a specifically pro-Israel event through August 2026.
His relevant public record centers on the Israel-Hamas war that began October 7, 2023. He condemned the Hamas attack as horrifying while also voicing concern about Israel's military response in October 2023, then in a wave of May 2024 interviews criticized Hamas by name, said a Palestinian state under current conditions would likely become "Taliban-like" and Iran-aligned, and criticized parts of the campus pro-Palestinian movement for sliding into antisemitism.
He has also long been associated with PEN America, an organization that became a target of literary-world boycott activists specifically because it declined to exclude Jewish and Israeli writers. Rushdie has spoken at PEN America events for years, chaired its board, and founded its World Voices Festival, and he did not join the 1,000-plus-author PalFest boycott letter of October 2024. None of this amounts to Rushdie declaring himself pro-Israel. His consistent, repeated position is that he has long supported Palestinian statehood but currently distrusts Hamas as its potential governing force.
The bottom line
Rushdie is not a declared supporter of Israel and has no direct ties, visits, donations, or Jewish identity, to the country. But his public statements since October 7, 2023 consistently condemn Hamas by name, reject the "Taliban-like" state he believes Hamas would build, and decline to join literary boycotts of Israeli and Jewish writers. That makes him a reliable critic of Hamas and the boycott movement, even while he stops short of endorsing Israel outright.
Wear where you stand
Whatever any one public figure says, plenty of people want to make their own position on Israel visible and easy to say out loud. If that's you, our I Stand With Israel collection has pieces built for exactly that, including the I Stand With Israel bracelet, a simple, wearable way to show support without needing a headline to explain it.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
