Indian-born British-American novelist Salman Rushdie warned on Sunday that a Palestinian state would be a Taliban state, speaking in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper.
“[I]f there were a Palestinian state now, it would be run by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state. A satellite state of Iran. Is this what the progressive movements of the Western left want to create?” Rushdie asked.
“There are not a lot of deep thoughts about this, but mainly an emotional reaction to the deaths in Gaza. That’s OK. But when it slides into antisemitism and sometimes even support for Hamas, then it becomes problematic,” he added.
Rushdie’s latest book, Knife: Meditations on an Attempted Murder, released last month, deals with the August 12, 2022, attack at the Chautauqua Institution in New York when a 22-year-old jihadist rushed the stage to kill him.
