Organizers of a major literary festival in Australia apologized on Thursday for their decision, made following the Dec. 14 Bondi Beach massacre, to cancel the appearance of a Palestinian-Australian writer who has denied the atrocities of Oct. 7.
In their letter of apology to the writer, Randa Abdel-Fattah, organizers of the Adelaide Writers’ Week said she was invited to attend the 2027 event following her exclusion from this year’s event, which was due to begin on Feb. 28. This year’s event was canceled following a writers’ boycott of the event over Abdel-Fattah’s exclusion.
On Jan. 8, in announcing the cancellation of Abdel-Fattah’s appearance, the organizers wrote that although they see no “connection” between her writings and “the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements, we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
Two suspected jihadists murdered 15 people on Dec. 14 on Bondi Beach in Sydney, where they were filmed targeting a Chanukah celebration.
On the day after Oct 7, 2023, Abdel-Fattah posted to social media an image of a Hamas terrorist paragliding into Israel with a PLO flag as the parachute. Hours earlier, Hamas-led terrorists had invaded Israeli towns, some using paragliders, and murdered some 1,200 people.
She has also denied claims of Zionists to “cultural safety” and reportedly doxed Jewish creative professionals on WhatsApp.
In their apology on Thursday, the organizers wrote: “We apologize to Dr Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her. Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right. Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance, Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.”
Abdel-Fattah wrote on Instagram that the apology was a vindication “of our collective solidarity and mobilisation against anti-Palestinian racism, bullying and censorship.”
Louise Adler resigned as the festival’s director on Tuesday in protest of the cancellation of Abdel-Fattah’s invitation.
Tony Berg, a former board member of the festival, wrote in a statement to the media that Adler and Abdel-Fattah had a “selective” and “utterly hypocritical” devotion to free speech.
This was a reference to the successful campaign led by the two women to cancel the appearance of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman from the 2024 festival over a column in which he’d likened Middle Eastern politics to the power dynamics of the animal kingdom.
“They both exhibit hypocrisy in defending free speech for some, when I observed them both to stridently oppose free speech during my time on the board,” Berg said.
Abdel-Fattah wrote to the festival board on Feb. 6, 2024, asking that it cancel Friedman. Three days later, the festival board said that Friedman “is no longer participating in this year’s program.”
Adler and two other board members threatened to resign unless Friedman was dropped, Berg revealed. “In the face of that threat, the board felt it had no alternative but to … withdraw the invitation to Friedman,” he wrote.
Abdel-Fattah disputed Berg’s claims that she, along with Adler, led the charge to cancel Friedman.
South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas, whose government is a key backer of the festival, said that he “wholeheartedly” supported Abdel-Fattah’s exclusion and had “absolutely made clear to the board that I did not think it was wise” to invite her. Abdel-Fattah said she would pursue a defamation lawsuit against him, The Guardian reported.
