Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, who praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, dies at 76
Prominent columnist used his voice over the years to back Palestinians, chastise Israel’s establishment and settlement policies; he also hailed Arab Spring, taught at universities
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, an outspoken supporter of the Palestinians who celebrated the Hamas terror group’s October 7 massacre last year, has died. He was 76.
Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, taught at universities around the world, making him one of Lebanon’s most prominent intellectuals. He had been ill for months and was admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death early Sunday, Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily which he worked for said.
The Lebanese writer, born and raised in Beirut, wrote articles in different Arab media outlets over the past five decades in addition to his novels, making him well known throughout the Arab world.
Two days after Hamas’s murderous onslaught of October 7 — when thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 in Israel, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages — Khoury wrote an article in Al-Quds A-Arab daily titled “It’s Palestine.”
Khoury wrote then that “the biggest open-air prison, the besieged Ghetto of Gaza, has launched a war against Israel, occupied settlements and forced settlers to flee.”
Born in Beirut on July 12, 1948, Khoury had been known for his political stances from his support of Palestinians to his harsh criticism of Israel and what he called its “brutal” settling policy in the West Bank and Gaza. He studied at the Lebanese University and later at the University of Paris, where he received a PhD in social history.
“The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote, referring to the Jewish state’s settlement policies. The “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” is a term used by many Arabs to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when Arab countries attacked the newly established State of Israel in 1948 — a period that was also marked by the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Jews from neighboring Mideast countries.
Khoury was an outspoken supporter of Arab uprisings that broke out in the region starting in 2011 and toppled several governments.
“The question is not why the Arab revolts broke out,” Khoury wrote after uprisings that toppled long-serving leaders such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. “The question is not how people tore down the wall of fear but how fear built Arab kingdoms of silence for five decades.”
Khoury, who belonged to a Greek Orthodox Christian family, took part in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and was wounded in one of the battles.
From 1992 until 2009, Khoury was the editor of the cultural section of Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar newspaper. Until his death, he was the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Studies magazine, a bulletin issued by the Beirut-based Institute for Palestine Studies.
His first novel was published in 1975, but his second, Little Mountain, which he released in 1977 and was about Lebanon’s devastating civil war was very successful.
Bab al-Shams, or Gate of the Sun, released in 2000, was about Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Lebanon since 1948 — where they are denied citizenship. A movie about the novel was made in Egypt.
His novels were translated into several languages, including Hebrew.
Khoury also taught at different US universities including New York University, Columbia, Princeton and Houston, as well as the University of London in Britain.
