Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa (Arabic: سوزان أبو الهوى; born 1970) is a Palestinian-American writer, and activist. She wrote the novels Mornings in Jenin, The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), and Against the Loveless World (2020). She founded the children's organization Playgrounds for Palestine.

Early life and education

Susan Abulhawa's parents, born in At-Tur, a neighborhood on the Mount of Olives east of the Old City of Jerusalem, were Palestinian refugees of the Six-Day War in 1967. Her father, according to one account, "was expelled at gunpoint; her mother, who was studying in Germany at the time, was unable to return and the couple reunited in Jordan before moving to Kuwait, where Abulhawa was born in 1970."

Her parents split shortly after her birth and Abulhawa's childhood was turbulent, moving between Kuwait, the United States, Jordan, and Palestine. She lived in the United States with an uncle until she was 5, then spent several years moving between relatives in Jordan and Kuwait. She lived in Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi, a Jerusalem orphanage, from the age of 10 to 13. At 13 she returned to the United States, where she lived with her father briefly before entering the foster care system.

Abulhawa studied biology at Pfeiffer University in North Carolina, and completed a masters in neuroscience (biomedical science) at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.

After her studies, Abulhawa began a career in medical science. Prior to dedicating herself to writing full-time, she worked as a researcher for a large pharmaceutical company.

Activism

In July 2001, Abulhawa founded Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-governmental organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children and build playgrounds in Palestine and UN refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. The first playground was erected in early 2002. She is involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and as a speaker for Al Awda, a Palestinian right of return coalition. Abulhawa is signatory to the boycott campaign against Israel, including a cultural boycott. She gave the keynote address at one of the first campus BDS conferences at the University of Pennsylvania. Abulhawa has said the BDS movement was "one of the most effective ways to promote Palestinian rights and achieve justice against Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing".

Abulhawa has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa. In 2013, Abulhawa declined an invitation from Al Jazeera Media Network to participate in a discussion about the Nakba with three or four Israelis, having been asked by the producer to participate as the only Palestinian as they needed her to "balance things out". In an explanatory letter, she criticized the premise of the discussion, comparing it to featuring descendants of Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day with a token Jewish participant.

In 2024, Abulhawa declared in light of the Gaza war that "Israel is committing the holocaust of our time, and it is doing it in full view of a seemingly indifferent world." On November 29, 2024, Abulhawa was invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion "This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide". She spoke as a member of a team in favor of the proposition together with Miko Peled and Mohammed El-Kurd. The motion was carried with a majority of 278 to 59. The Oxford Union later deleted her original recording on YouTube and uploaded a censored version. The parts of Abulhawa's speech that were edited out by the Oxford Union included her mentions of the IDF's abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and the IDF's use of "booby trapped toys". Abulhawa responded that the Union seemed to have yielded to demands from Zionists "as Palestinians struggle to make our voices heard in the midst of a genocide". Abulhawa sued the Oxford Union and a settlement was reached under which the Oxford Union made Abulhawa's full speech available on its platforms.

Abulhawa has referred to Israelis as "rootless, soulless ghouls" in her writing, as well as describing the October 7, 2023 attacks as a "spectacular moment that shocked the world". She described the Gaza war as a "Jewish supremacist slaughter", writing, "these sons of Satan will taste what they meted to us". Abulhawa has said that she "wholeheartedly" embraces "armed and violent resistance". After an Israeli-American was shot dead near Jericho in February 2023, Abulhawa called him "human garbage". In December 2024, Abulhawa said that Zionists "aren't human like us" and that "we're ruled by spawns of Satan", in reference to Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro signing missiles alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a factory supplying munitions to Ukraine. In relation to her comments, Al Jazeera wrote that Abulhawa said "she was responding to a Zionist power structure and its proponents from the perspective of a Palestinian who has experienced the ravages of that system".

In May 2025, after the Capital Jewish Museum shooting in which two Israeli Embassy staff were killed, Abulhawa said the victims were "genocidal cheerleaders" and "human garbage", and that "no genocidal Zionist should be safe anywhere in the world". She described the attack as "an act of resistance", while also saying that it could be "a false flag to focus [attention] on manufactured antisemitism". In August 2025, Abulhawa wrote that "Israelis should not feel safe anywhere in the world", and "I also don't give a shit if people collapse the distinction between zionists from jews". She called to "wipe that vile colony [Israel] from this earth".