Adelaide festival did not dump Jewish columnist from 2024 program despite request from Randa Abdel-Fattah and others | Adelaide festival
The Adelaide festival board has not removed a Jewish columnist from its 2024 lineup at Adelaide writers’ week, despite lobbying by a group of 10 academics including Randa Abdel-Fattah.
South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas on Saturday claimed the board had sacked New York Times pro-Israel columnist Thomas Friedman in 2024 and reiterated his support for the festival board’s decision on Thursday to remove Palestinian Australian academic Abdel-Fattah from this year’s programme.
“I would like to note that the Adelaide Festival has made its own decision, under very similar circumstances, to exclude a Jewish author from its Adelaide Writers’ Week program in 2024,” Malinauskas told the Guardian through a spokesperson on Saturday.
“I support this decision and the consistent application of this principle.”
On Saturday, News Corp publications picked up the prime minister’s statement and reported the apparent discrepancy between the public reaction to Abdel Fattah’s dismissal and the alleged dismissal of Friedman two years ago; This did not spark the mass boycott that Writers’ Week is currently seeing, making the 2026 event increasingly untenable.
Guardian Australia independently confirmed that more than 70 participants had withdrawn.
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Abdel-Fattah and nine other academics sent a letter to the Adelaide festival board on February 6, 2024, demanding that the invitation to Friedman, who published a controversial column days earlier, be rescinded. He likened the Middle East conflict to the animal kingdom.
But in a letter seen by the Guardian, the festival board rejected this petition to dismiss Friedman.
“Requesting that an artist or writer be canceled from the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week is an extremely serious request,” the letter said. The document, dated 9 February 2024, was signed by Adelaide festival board chair Tracey Whiting.
“We have an international reputation for supporting freedom of artistic expression. Thomas L Friedman was scheduled to contribute online from New York. However, I have been told that he is no longer participating in this year’s program due to last-minute scheduling issues.”
The Guardian sought comment from Friedman in New York.
The letter means Abdel-Fattah’s exclusion from the 2026 event is not the first time the board has supported director Louise Adler’s programming decision.
After his cancellation was announced on Thursday, Abdel-Fattah accused the board of “blatant and shameless” anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.
In a statement to Guardian Australia on Sunday, he rejected any suggestion of hypocrisy in calling for Friedman to be removed from the festival in 2024.
“Friedman’s widely criticized NYT article compared various Arab and Muslim nations and groups to insects and vermin that must be exterminated, at a time when the phrase ‘human animals’ is being used to justify mass murder in Gaza,” he said in a statement.
“We were concerned about the impact of Friedman’s views on socially and historically marginalized people who have been dehumanized and discriminated against through the use of such racist tropes. Indeed, one of the examples we presented was how Jewish people have historically been likened to vermin.”
“In contrast, I was canceled because my existence and Palestinian identity was deemed ‘culturally insensitive’ and linked to the Bondi atrocity.
“I was canceled because, as a Palestinian, I am a vocal advocate against the destruction of my people.”
Abdel-Fattah claimed that the festival board acted hypocritically because it stated its commitment to “freedom of artistic expression” in its 2024 response to the Friedman matter.
“All of those kinds of so-called values were thrown aside when it came to canceling me,” he said.
In his column, Friedman compared the United States to an aging lion, Iran to a parasitoid wasp that infects and kills caterpillars (Lebanon, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq), Hamas to a trapdoor spider, and Benjamin Netanyahu to a sifaka lemur.
Friedman later acknowledged that some of his readers, including his colleagues, were insulted by his writing, finding it inhumane and employing racist tropes. He wrote: “If resorting to a metaphor or image alienates and angers some of my audience, I know I’m using the wrong metaphor… I never want anyone to feel insulted, even if I’m hitting the same mark as others.”
The festival board said in a statement on Thursday that the decision was made “taking into account his past statements”, although it did not “in any way” suggest that Abdel-Fattah or his writings had any connection with the tragedy at Bondi.
Abdel Fattah had previously faced sustained criticism from the Coalition and some Jewish organizations and media outlets for controversial comments about Israel, including the claim that Zionists “have no claim or right to cultural security”.
“We formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue programming Bondi at such an unprecedented time so soon after it,” the statement said.
“We recognize that these Board decisions will likely be disappointing to many in our community. We also recognize that our request for Dr. Abdel-Fattah will be labeled and create inconvenience and pressure on other participants. These decisions are not taken lightly.”
In 2023, Adler refused to abandon Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd, despite the withdrawal of major sponsors and boycotts by Ukrainian writers.
Adler argued that festivals should be “brave spaces” for confronting difficult ideas through literature, rather than being “safe spaces” designed for consensus.
At the time, the board supported him in this decision, and Malinauskas publicly stated that although he was “really disturbed” by some of the views of the two writers, it was not up to politicians to “decide what is culturally appropriate”.
The South Australian government appoints members to the festival board, but a spokesman for the prime minister told the Guardian the government had no power to direct the board in decision-making on artistic programming.
