Australian writers’ festival boss resigns after Palestinian author axed

Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week steps down amid question of speaker withdrawals and committee resignations.

The manager of a apical writers’ festival successful Australia has stepped down amid contention implicit the cancellation of a scheduled quality by a salient Australian Palestinian activistic and author.

Louise Adler, the manager of Adelaide Writers’ Week, said successful an op-ed published connected Tuesday that Randa Abdel-Fattah had been disinvited by the festival’s committee contempt her “strongest opposition”.

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Writing successful The Guardian, Adler called Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the festival lineup a stroke to escaped look and a “harbinger of a little escaped nation”.

“Now spiritual leaders are to beryllium policed, universities monitored, the nationalist broadcaster scrutinised and the arts starved,” Adler wrote.

“Are you oregon person you ever been a professional of Israel? Joe McCarthy would beryllium cheering connected the inheritors of his tactics,” she added, citing a fig successful Cold War past commonly associated with censorship.

Adler’s resignation is the latest stroke to the beleaguered event, which has experienced a question of talker withdrawals and committee resignations successful protestation of Abdel-Fattah’s cancellation.

The festival’s committee announced past week that it had decided to disinvite Abdel-Fattah, a well-known Palestinian advocator and vocal professional of Israel, aft determining that her quality would not beryllium “culturally sensitive” successful the aftermath of a mass shooting astatine Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach.

Fifteen radical were killed successful the December 14 attack, which targeted a beachside Hanukkah celebration. Authorities person said the 2 gunmen were inspired by ISIL (ISIS).

Abdel-Fattah has called her removal “a blatant and shameless enactment of anti-Palestinian racism” and a “despicable effort to subordinate maine with the Bondi massacre”.

On Monday, New Zealand’s erstwhile premier minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced that she would not spell up with her scheduled quality astatine the festival, adding her sanction to a boycott that has swelled to immoderate 180 writers, including erstwhile Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and award-winning novelist Zadie Smith.

But Peter Malinauskas, the premier of the authorities of South Australia, arsenic good arsenic respective national politicians and a fig of Jewish groups person backed the revocation of Abdel-Fattah’s invitation.

Abdel-Fattah’s critics person pointed to statements captious of Israel to reason that her views are beyond the pale.

She has, for instance, said that her “goal is decolonisation and the extremity of this murderous Zionist colony”, and that Zionists “have nary assertion oregon close to taste safety”.

In her op-ed connected Tuesday, Adler said pro-Israel lobbyists are utilizing “increasingly utmost and repressive” tactics, resulting successful a chilling effect connected code successful Australia.

“The caller mantra ‘Bondi changed everything’ has offered this lobby, its stenographers successful the media and a spineless governmental people yet different coercive weapon,” she wrote.

“Hence, successful 2026, the board, successful an ambiance of aggravated governmental pressure, has issued an edict that an writer is to beryllium cancelled.”

Separately connected Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the state would clasp a nationalist time of mourning connected January 22 to honour the victims of the Bondi Beach attack.

Albanese said the time would beryllium a “gathering of unity and remembrance”, with flags to beryllium flown astatine half-mast connected each Commonwealth buildings.