“As the Board responsible for the Adelaide Festival organisation and the Adelaide Writers’ Week events, staff, volunteers and participants, we have today [January 8] advised scheduled writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah that the Board has formed the judgment that we do not wish to proceed with her scheduled appearance at next month’s Writers’ Week.” In a pugnacious statement, Abdel-Fattah called the decision to scratch her attendance “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre.” Her very presence would be construed as “‘culturally insensitive’”, that she, as a Palestinian having nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity was “somehow a trigger for those in mourning”. In 2024, she added her name to a letter addressed to Adelaide Writers’ Week requesting the removal of Thomas Friedman from the schedule for his remarks in the New York Times analysing the Gaza War through the prism of the animal kingdom (the US, predictably, a lion, if old; Iran, a “parasitoid wasp”; Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, caterpillars; Benjamin Netanyahu, a sifaka lemur).
Author: Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Published at: 2026-01-13 23:05:49
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