More than 40 writers boycott Adelaide Writers’ Festival after anti-Israel academic Randa Abdel-Fattah dropped

More than 40 writers have pulled out of Adelaide Writers’ Week after organisers cancelled the appearance of controversial anti-Israel academic Randa Abdel-Fattah to be “culturally sensitive” in the wake of the Bondi massacre.

Dr Abdel-Fattah, a Macquarie University sociologist who has repeatedly called for the elimination of Israel on social media, had her planned appearance for next month cancelled, given a discussion about her new book Discipline would be occurring 11 weeks after 15 people were gunned down on the first day of a Jewish Hanukkah festival on December 14.

“Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s or her writings have any connection with 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,” the Adelaide Festival Board said on Thursday.

The cancelled author, who did a thesis on Islamophobia, responded by accusing the organisers of being “egregiously racist”.

“This is a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre,” Dr Abdel-Fattah said on X.

“What makes this so egregiously racist is that the Adelaide Writers Festival Board has stripped me of my humanity and agency, reducing me to an object onto which others can project their racists fears and smears.”

Dr Abdel-Fattah, 46, has frequently used her platform on social media to call for the elimination of Israel in April 2024 declaring on X: “May we see next Eid in a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

In February, the Muslim woman with Palestinian and Egyptian heritage, suggested the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by universities was “intellectually dishonest” and included critics of Israel.

“The only way we are permitted to exist as Palestinian and Arab in the academy is if we acquiesce to genocide, occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism,” she said.

That month, she had a $870,000 grant from the Australian Research Council suspended, having been awarded funding in 2022 to research Arab and Muslim social movements in Australia.

As of Friday afternoon, 47 writers had withdrawn from the festival including Miles Franklin winners Michelle de Kretser and Melissa Lucashenko, novelist Helen Garner and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, a self-described communist.

The Australian Society of Authors on Friday declared said it was “deeply troubled” and said it would write to South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas for supporting the decision. His State Labor Government funds the festival directed by publisher Louise Adler, a Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors who is also a critic of Israel.

Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler blasted former journalism academic Wendy Bacon for saying Dr Abdel-Fattah’s cancellation “won’t silence the voices who will keep talking about Israel’s genocide and apartheid”.

“If you are more outraged by a festival withdrawing an invitation to someone who celebrated the murder, kidnapping and rape of innocent people on 7 October than the actual murder, kidnapping and rape of innocent people, then you aren’t really interested in the wellbeing of Palestinians,” he tweeted.

Peter Greste, who like Dr Abdel-Fattah is a Macquarie University academic, was among the first to pull out of the festival on Thursday night. As an Al Jazeera journalist, he was jailed for 400 days in Egypt in 2013 and 2014 after being accused of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Islamist ideology was adopted by Hamas in Gaza.

“She is being dropped for her ‘previous statements’, that by the board’s own admission have nothing to with the Bondi attack,” he said on LinkedIn.

“I have always argued for freedom of thought and expression which is why I don’t feel I have any choice but to pull out of the Writers’ Week.”

Since his post, a stampede of left-leaning writers critical of Israel have also pulled out of the event, with Australia Institute political analyst Amy Remeikis, a former Guardian journalist, describing Dr Abdel-Fattah’s cancellation as a decision of “moral spinelessness”.

“To link the cancellation to the abhorrent terrorist attack in Bondi speaks volumes over who is allowed to have a voice in Australia,” she said in a Crikey article.

“Cancelling Abdel-Fattah does not make Jewish people any safer. Silencing anyone who speaks against a genocide does not make Jewish people, or anyone, safer. It does nothing to address very real concerns about anti-Semitism, or other forms of hate in Australia.”

Jane Caro, a former advertising expert panellist on the ABC’s Gruen program, joined the growing writer exodus on Thursday night, telling her Facebook followers she had withdrawn “with real sadness”.

“It’s the chilling effect of banning/shunning people whose views you don’t like, on our ability to speak freely, that particularly worries me,” she told The Nightly on Friday.

Adelaide-based Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the cancellation decision was “deeply concerning and should be reversed”.