Supporters of the Palestinian people need to accept that traditional forms of peaceful protest have not had a meaningful impact on the actions of Israel in Gaza, author Sally Rooney has said. Speaking at a public meeting in Dublin on Tuesday evening, Rooney criticised the mainstream media’s coverage of the invasion by Israel, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 70,000 Palestinians. She paid tribute to the more than 200 journalists killed by Israel while attempting to report on what was happening and said people needed to take action if they wanted to make a difference.“It is not enough for us as members of the public simply to know the facts, to sit at home, reading the news and shaking our heads in dismay,” she said. “If we are to do justice to the bravery of those journalists who risk their lives to tell us the truth, then we have to stand up and take action.”Author Sally Rooney and her husband John Prasifka (left) in conversation with Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed in Dublin on Tuesday. Photograph: Natalia Campos Rooney added that “at this juncture, many of us, certainly including myself, also have to take stock of our failures”. “Many of our old familiar methods of protest and dissent have by now proven completely inadequate to the challenge before us,” she said. “Many millions of us have tried taking to the streets, signing petitions, writing articles, emailing our representatives and it is past time to accept that those tactics on their own have not worked.”Rooney told the event at the Teachers’ Club, organised by New York independent publisher Or Books, at which Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed, comedian and activist Tadhg Hickey and journalist Matt Kennard, who is in Ireland to promote his updated and expanded Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals, also spoke, that “we are watching the world’s richest and most powerful nations facilitate an undisguised genocide”.“We are now at one and the same moment witnessing the rise to power of fascist political movements worldwide.”She described Israel’s current attack on Palestine, which followed the events of October 7th, 2023 and the destruction of huge swathes of housing, health, educational and other facilities as “the darkest [moment] that we have witnessed in our lifetimes”.“The truth of the world we live in, the logic of our civilisation today, is there in the rubble of Gaza, and as we know all too well, the state of Israel has not and could not have conducted this campaign of genocide alone,” she said. “The last three years have revealed more clearly than ever the extent to which the Israeli state functions as a projection of US power. Foreign aid, weaponry, and military intelligence have flowed from wealthy western nations into Israel, facilitating and supporting the mass killings of Palestinians. “Why? Certainly not for legal or institutional reasons, considering the perhaps irreversible damage the Israeli state has by now inflicted on the foundations of international law and the multilateral world system.”Rooney said the European political class had “torn international law to shreds” and “made a mockery of their own voters” to retain their protected place in the US imperial system. Rooney’s first two novels, Conversations with Friends and Normal People, were translated into Hebrew by Israeli publisher Modan. However, she in 2021 declined to allow the same publisher translate Beautiful World, Where Are You, saying that she supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.In 2024, a translation of Intermezzo was published by November Books, an independent Israeli publisher that supports Palestinian rights.