Following backlash over the booting of a Palestinian author, Adelaide Writers’ Week has been canceled.
As my colleague James Folta reported last week, the Adelaide Literary Festival descended into chaos after Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian-Australian author, was abruptly removed from the festival over “sensitivity concerns.”
In the wake of this call from the board, dozens of authors moved to boycott the ALF. More than 180 scheduled speakers–including novelist Zadie Smith and Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern–pulled out of the program last Friday. And yesterday, the entire board defected over Abdel-Fattah’s exclusion, led by director Louise Adler.
In a show of solidarity, Adler told The Guardian of her resignation, “I cannot be party to silencing writers.” And as of this morning, this year’s festival has officially been cancelled.
The Australian political climate has been reshaped by the recent deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi beach. Abdel-Fattah, a known critic of Israel, was deemed too controversial to participate in the wake of this terror, on the basis of some nebulously defined “previous comments.”
As the CBC reports, Abdel-Fattah is an outspoken critic of Israel. But she had been initially invited to speak about her novel Discipline, which follows two Muslim youths, “a journalist and a university student, navigating issues of censorship in Sydney.”
The board moved to “disinvite” the author under lobbying pressure from the Jewish Community Council for South Australia. Peter Malinauskus, premier of the South Australian (host) state, supported the decision. Though other groups, like the Jewish Council of Australia, were quick to condemn it.
As Abel-Fattah repeatedly told her censors, all her previous criticism has been directed at either the state of Israel, or the political ideology that abets genocide. Abdel-Fattah told The Guardian that the board’s attempt to associate her with antisemitism—and specifically the Bondi massacre—were “despicable.”
In their cancellation statement this morning, lingering ALF leadership issued Abdel-Fattah an apology for the clumsy ousting and subsequent fallout. “As a board we took this action out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event,” the leaders wrote. “Instead, this decision has created more division and for that we express our sincere apologies.”
Abdel-Fattah rejected this apology, and supplied The Guardian with a statement of her own:
Once again the board, citing the ‘national discourse’ for an action that specifically targets me, a Palestinian Australian Muslim woman, is explicitly articulating that I cannot be part of the national discourse, which is insulting and racist in the extreme…
The board again reiterates the link to a terror attack I had nothing to do with, nor did any Palestinian. The Bondi shooting does not mean I or anyone else has to stop advocating for an end to the illegal occupation and systematic extermination of my people—this is an obscene and absurd demand.
The Adelaide Writers’ Week, functional hub of the Adelaide Literary Festival, was scheduled to run for six days. Last year was the event’s fortieth birthday. The celebration brought 160,000 readers and writers to Adelaide, making it the largest fest of its kind in Australia.
Next year—according to today’s statement—a newly appointed board hopes to revive the event “in a way which safeguards the long and rich cultural legacy of our state.”
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