Jewish leaders slam Adelaide Festival for reinstating Abdel-Fattah

The Adelaide Festival Corporation has reversed its decision to exclude activist Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week, reinstating her invitation to speak at the 2027 event and issuing an unreserved apology.

The decision by the newly appointed festival board on Thursday drew fierce criticism from Jewish community leaders, who pointed to Abdel-Fattah’s record of celebrating the October 7 massacre and refusing to condemn Hamas.

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council national chairman Mark Leibler said it was “nothing short of grotesque” that the festival board had decided to apologise for rescinding the invitation and invite her to speak at the next event in 2027.

“She has, among other things: called on all who oppose racism ‘to ensure that every space Zionists enter is culturally unsafe for them’; changed her social media profile picture on October 8, 2023 to a paraglider to signify the use of paragliders by Hamas terrorists to breach Israel’s borders on October 7, 2023; led young children chanting for intifada; dismissed the accounts of horrific rapes on that day as Zionists peddling ‘rape atrocity propaganda’; taken part in the doxxing of 600 Jewish creatives; when invited to do so has specifically refused to condemn Hamas; and expressed her wish that Israel be destroyed in 2025,” Leibler wrote on LinkedIn.

Abdel-Fattah has posted that Zionists have “no claim or right to cultural safety” and stated “To hell with you all. Every last Zionist. May you never know a second’s peace in your sadistic miserable lives.”

In July 2021, she shared a panel called “Palestine: Resisting the Occupation” with Basem Naim, head of international relations for Hamas.

National Council of Jewish Women Australia national president Lynda Ben-Menashe said purveyors of hate speech and rape denial being platformed at Adelaide Writers’ Week was “a stain on Australia’s cultural life”.

“It would be proper writers’ festival fare to see Randa Abdel-Fattah on stage with Thomas Friedman, who was uninvited last year, but would have much to contribute to a robust intellectual conversation with her,” Ben-Menashe said.

“We look forward to the day when all writers enjoy the cultural safety that Abdel-Fattah insists must not be accorded to Zionists.”

Leibler said the hypocrisy of former festival director Louise Adler, who resigned because she said she “cannot be a party to silencing writers”, was “beyond shocking”.

“It has now been demonstrated this is exactly what she did in seeking and securing the withdrawal of the invitation to the 2024 event originally extended to Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times who also happens to be Jewish,” Leibler said.

Former Adelaide Festival board member Tony Berg told The Australian Financial Review that Adler had led a demand to the board to retract an invitation to Friedman to participate in the 2024 Adelaide Writers’ Week.

“After Tom Friedman was invited to speak, Randa Abdel-Fattah had led a group of academics demanding that Tom Friedman be deplatformed,” Berg said.

“Then Louise Adler, Ruth MacKenzie and Kath Mainland put an ultimatum to the board that they would resign if it did not endorse their recommendation to disinvite Friedman. In the face of that threat, the board felt it had no alternative but to allow Louise Adler to withdraw the invitation to Friedman.”

Leibler said the saga of the Adelaide Festival needed to be examined as a matter of first priority and urgency by the recently announced Royal Commission into antisemitism.

“It is one thing to introduce legislation to more effectively counter antisemitism and organisations which promote it. That is important. However, above all what is required is principled leadership from governments and organisations which play critical roles in civil society,” Leibler said.

The Adelaide Festival Corporation said in a statement on Thursday it had retracted its January 8 announcement that it had decided to exclude Abdel-Fattah from participating this year. The original decision to exclude her was made on the basis that her inclusion would “not be culturally sensitive” following the Bondi massacre.

“We have reversed the decision and will reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak at the next Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2027. We apologise to Dr Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her,” the statement read.

“Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right. Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.”

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas maintained his support for the original decision to exclude Abdel-Fattah, despite the new board’s reversal.

“My position is consistent. The views that I put have been based on fact and principle, and the facts have now been proven, and my principles haven’t changed. So other people can explain why they’re changing their position, I certainly don’t feel the need to change mine,” Malinauskas said on Thursday.

Malinauskas had previously said: “Can you imagine if a far right Zionist walked in to a Sydney mosque and murdered 15 people. Could you imagine that as premier of this state, I would actively support a far right Zionist going to writers week and speaking hateful rhetoric towards Islamic people? Of course I wouldn’t. The reverse has happened in this instance, and I’m not going to support that either.”

Abdel-Fattah on Wednesday served a formal concerns notice for defamation to Malinauskas, accusing him of making harmful public statements about her and allegedly suggesting she was “an extremist terrorist sympathiser”.

The Adelaide Festival board’s original decision to exclude Abdel-Fattah triggered the resignation of festival director Adler and four board members, and the withdrawal of over 180 writers, leading to the cancellation of the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week.

The new board was appointed by the South Australian government last week.

The Bondi Beach terror attack on December 14 killed 15 people during a Chanukah celebration.