The cancellation of Randa Abdel-Fattah

The decision to exclude a Palestinian writer from Adelaide Writers’ Week was intended to reflect intellectual awareness but failed. Doctor Binoy Kampmark reports.

BOARDS are a funny bunch. Its members, who often lack expertise, claim knowledge they do not possess, and have insights that are never enlightened, can turn the incident into legend.

Rather than minding its own business as part of the 2026 Adelaide Festival and leaving Adelaide Writers’ Week uneventful, a foolish act of intervention was carried out.

The controversy centered on the exclusion of an invited writer from the speaking programme: Australian-Palestinian writer and academic Randa Abdülfettahthe person who will discuss the novel Discipline.

Festival Board expression He began explaining his decisions on a serious note.

‘As the Board of Directors responsible for the organization of the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week events, staff, volunteers and participants, we have today [January 8] The planned author is Dr. Randa informed Abdel-Fattah that the Board had decided that we did not wish to proceed with her planned participation in Writers’ Week next month.’

Then came the note of pure cowardice framed in the bankrupt language of middle management.

‘While we are in no way suggesting that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, we have formed the view that, given her past statements, it would not be culturally sensitive to continue programming her at such an unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.’

It became clear that Abdel Fattah’s views on the war in Gaza were so salty that he was removed from the program. These were not specified, but various social media notes and it was inevitable that public statements would come to the fore attacking “this murderous Zionist colony” and claiming that the Zionists had “no claim or right to cultural security.” His removal was heartfelt approved Norman Schueler of the Jewish Community Council of South Australia and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas.

If this resolution was intended to reflect balance, intellectual awareness and understanding of the shootings at the Bondi Beach event celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah on December 14, 2025, it failed on all counts.

He ignored the fact that the two attackers were allegedly inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh), a reactionary group indifferent to the Palestinian state and hostile to Hamas. (Repeated compare Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always linked Hamas to ISIS. incorrect To the point of lying.)

This placed a degree of responsibility on Abdel Fattah as a Palestinian, representative of a people systematically murdered, dispossessed and starved by the Israeli campaign. This means that any discussion of Israel’s conduct in response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, sort of The attitude of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Occupied Palestinian Territories and some known human rights organizations towards the genocide was insensitive.

Only the docile views would be allowed, the impotent or inactive would be celebrated.

A cursory look at some of the Board members reveals corporate blandness and brand merchants adept in the murky world of “consulting” and “communications.”

No literary figures of note can be found, let alone historians, sociologists, or anyone animated by what might loosely be called the liberal arts. There are people adept at “strategic marketing, audience development and community engagement,” like current former president Tracey Whiting — or at least a few resignations have been made. Leesa Chesser’s description sounds like a trained dog, “studied in health economics and business.”

Brenton Cox has triumph and skill as general manager of Adelaide Airport. Daniela Ritorto is obviously more of a journalistic consultant than a journalist, well-versed in “strategic communications advice” and apparently a “sought-after master of ceremonies and panel moderator.”

Like Australia’s countless and tyrannical university administrators, the country’s cultural and arts administrators cannot be accused of having the slightest sense of aesthetics, let alone any cerebral understanding, of the field of expertise they claim to control. It’s all show, and it’s also terrible.

Abdülfettah, who made a combative statement in the name The decision to scratch his attendance was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship, and a despicable attempt to link me to the Bondi massacre.” His presence would be interpreted as “culturally insensitive”; As a Palestinian who had no involvement in the Bondi atrocity, he was “somewhat of a trigger for the mourners.”

The Festival Board appeared to be experiencing the same troubles that befell the organizers of the Bendigo Writers Festival last August. At the penultimate moment, they thought it would be wise for the writers and panelists to subscribe to a subscription. Code of Conduct in what can only be seen as a bad crisis of Zhdanovism. Terms such as “Zionist” or “Zionism” were also to be avoided, as were “topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive or disrespectful”.

Many writers retreated and retreated.

But in Australia, when we’re talking about the destruction of Gaza or Israel’s enemies, who by definition must be seen as play-doh freaks of demonology, cancellation excitement is pretty passé. Pianist Jayson Gillham had his contract canceled when he objected to the brutality of Israel’s Gaza campaign during a recital in 2024. canceled By the invertebrate authorities at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The matter is in the courts.

Artists Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino fared slightly better; they were first canceled by Creative Australia from representing Australia at the Venice Biennale, but later reappointed After great anger.

According to Abdülfettah, the solidarity among the scribes was very high. About 100 of the original 124 participants withdrew. Among them is the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardernbritish writer Zadie Smithformer Greek Finance Minister and rabble-rouser Yanis Varoufakisand Australian historian Clare Wright. wright expressed As a Jew from Australia, it was shocking and insulting that the Board would exploit the “Bondi tragedy to weaponise a much-loved and respected literary festival”.

Leaving aside the tangible explosion of an event lost in fine print and chatter that would otherwise go the way of most writers’ events, a great irony emerges. Like many writers, Abdülfettah is not immune from the mistake of canceling when it comes to people he doesn’t like. In 2024, he added his name to a letter addressed to Adelaide Writers’ Week demanding that Thomas Friedman be removed from the writing program. notes The New York Times analyzes the Gaza War through the prism of the animal kingdom (the United States, predictably, a lion if old; Iran, a “parasitoid wasp”; Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, caterpillars; Benjamin Netanyahu, a sifaka lemur).

Friedman has spent a life full of grandiose, insensitive readings on the human condition, earning income from commercial endeavors like Lexus and Olive Tree, but that’s hardly a reason to write him off. People like this need to be displayed as ridiculous treasures, rather than hidden away until they fade away.

The Festival Board was determined then, unlike now. Even crude stupidity must have a platform.

reply From Whiting:

“Asking for the cancellation of an artist or writer from the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week is an extremely serious request. We have an international reputation for supporting freedom of artistic expression.”

That reputation is gone, as is Whiting himself.