Palestinian author responds to cancellation by Adelaide Writers’ Week ‘over Bondi attack’

Author and lawyer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah has spoken out about the decision of the ‘Adelaide Writers’ Week’ to cancel her for being Palestinian-Australian and linking Palestine to the recent Bondi Beach attack.

Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah: cancelled

Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah said:

This is a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre. 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 racist fears and smears.

The Board’s reasoning suggests that my mere presence is “culturally insensitive”; that I, a Palestinian who had nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity, am somehow a trigger for those in mourning and that I should therefore be persona non grata in cultural circles because my very presence as a Palestinian is threatening and “unsafe”.

After two years of Israel’s live-streamed genocide of Palestinians, Australian arts and cultural institutions continue to reveal their utter contempt and inhumanity towards Palestinians. The only Palestinians they will tolerate are silent and invisible ones.

I remain confident that the writing community and the broader public will ultimately respond with principle and integrity, as they did when I was singled out in the same racist way during the Bendigo Writers Festival. In the end, the Adelaide Writers Festival will be left with panellists who demonise a Palestinian out of one side of their mouths while waxing lyrical about freedom of speech from the other.

The Bondi attack had no link to Palestine, Palestinians or protests against Israel’s genocide and for Palestinian freedom. Local reports link it to terror group Islamic State, whose only representatives in Gaza are the criminal ‘Abu Shabab gang’ – which is funded by… Israel. This has not, of course, prevented Israeli and Israel lobby mouthpieces attempting to exploit the attack to repress pro-Palestine protest, despite the Muslim hero who disarmed one of the attackers and was shot by the other.

A growing backlash

A number of other writers have cancelled their appearances at the Adelaide festival because of the cancellation of Abdel-Fattah. Those withdrawing include Michelle de Kretser, Melissa Lucashenko

Other authors who have withdrawn from the festival include Peter Greste, Yanis Varoufakis, Evelyn Araluen, Amy McQuire, Clare Wright, Chelsea Watego, Bernadette Brennan and Amy Remeikis. Araluen said:

I refuse to participate in this spectacle of censorship.

Independent publisher Michael West Media condemned the festival board’s move as:

A literary icon succumb[ing] to Israel pressure.

Featured image via the Canary