Australia festival faces mass boycott after dropping Palestinian author

Dozens of writers, four board members, and a sponsor have withdrawn from a top Australian arts festival after it cancelled an Australian-Palestinian author’s invitation in the wake of the Bondi Beach mass shooting.

The Adelaide Festival confirmed in a statement on Monday that the chairperson and three members of its board had resigned after it disinvited Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week.

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The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board’s decision.

In addition to the board members, about 100 of the 124 participants have also withdrawn from the festival, which runs from February 27 to March 15, leaving it in doubt, according to local media reports.

The Adelaide Festival board had announced on Thursday that it would disinvite Abdel-Fattah from its February event because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to programme her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”.

The shooting, which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14, prompted nationwide calls to tackle anti-Semitism.

Abdel-Fattah, a Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship”. She said the board’s attempt to associate her with the Bondi killings was “despicable”.

Mass boycott

The writers who pulled out of the festival included former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who had been scheduled to discuss her memoir, as well as former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, British author Zadie Smith, Irish novelist Roisin O’Donnell and Russian-American journalist M Gessen.

Varoufakis posted a video on X showing him tearing up his invitation.

Australian-British author Kathy Lette, who is also boycotting the event, wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive'”.

Leading independent think tank Australia Institute also denounced the decision of the festival organisers as “pure, ugly politics”, and announced its withdrawal as a sponsor of the event.

“The moral spinelessness in not only seeking to silence Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, but to link the cancellation to the abhorrent terrorist attack in Bondi, speaks volumes over who is allowed to have a voice in Australia,” said Amy Remeikis, chief political analyst of the Australia Institute.

The dropping of Abdel-Fattah stands in contrast to the organisers’ decision in 2024 to retain the pro-Israel New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, despite lobbying from a group of 10 academics, including Abdel-Fattah, who called for his removal over a controversial column that compared the conflict in Gaza with the animal kingdom.

Friedman ultimately did not attend because of last-minute scheduling issues, according to The Guardian Australia.

Abdel-Fattah told the news outlet on Sunday that she rejected any allegation of hypocrisy over her calls for Friedman’s removal.

“Friedman’s widely criticised NYT article compared various Arab and Muslim nations and groups to insects and vermin requiring eradication at a time when talk of ‘human animals’ was being used to justify wholesale slaughter in Gaza,” she said in a statement.

“In contrast, I was cancelled because my presence and identity as a Palestinian was deemed ‘culturally insensitive’ and linked to the Bondi atrocity,” she added.

Tougher laws

In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government have accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of failing to act on a rise in anti-Semitic attacks and criticised protest marches against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, held since 2023.

Albanese, who denies the allegations, said last week a royal commission would consider the events of the shooting as well as anti-Semitism and social cohesion in Australia.

Rights groups say anti-Jewish sentiment, as well as anti-Islam and anti-immigration sentiment, are rising in Australia. Many Australians have also expressed their concerns over a rise in right-wing activism in the country, where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas.

On Monday, Albanese announced that he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws and authorise a ‍gun buyback scheme.

He said Australians were entitled to express different views about the Middle East, but what they are not entitled to do “is to hold someone to account for the actions of others because they are a young boy wearing a school uniform going ‍to a Jewish ⁠school or a young woman wearing a hijab”.

Officials said the proposed laws would also ease visa denials on the grounds of racial bigotry and lower the threshold for banning hate organisations, including neo-Nazi groups.