The board on Tuesday cancelled<\/a> the writers\u2019 week, a premier Australian literary event and part of the Adelaide Festival, after 180 international and Australian authors boycotted it over Abdel-Fattah\u2019s ban. The writers\u2019 week director, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author.<\/p>\n The festival\u2019s original board resigned in response to the backlash.<\/p>\n Abdel-Fattah accepts apology but says it\u2019s no \u2018quick fix\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIntellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right. Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance, Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short,\u201d the new board said in a statement.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tGet The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition \t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n Abdel-Fattah accepted the apology \u201cas acknowledgement of our right to speak publicly and truthfully about the atrocities that have been committed against the Palestinian people,\u201d but said in a post on X that \u201cit is not a quick fix to repair the damage and injury inflicted.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she would consider the invitation to the 2027 event in Adelaide, South Australia.<\/p>\n \t After Abdel-Fattah accepted the apology, the British band Pulp said they would perform at the Adelaide Festival, reversing their boycott.<\/p>\n Last week, the festival board said it had disinvited Abdel-Fattah from the writers\u2019 week because, \u201cgiven her past statements,\u201d it would not be culturally sensitive to include her in the event \u201cso soon after Bondi,\u201d a reference to last month\u2019s terror attack at a Hanukkah event, in which 15 people were killed.<\/p>\n The board did not cite any specific statement made by Abdel-Fattah that led to her being disinvited. It said it did not suggest that any of her writings had any connection with the Bondi Beach shootings.<\/p>\n Abdel-Fattah\u2019s past comments about Israel have been criticized by some Jewish and pro-Israel groups, and the Jewish Community Council of South Australia had lobbied against her participation at the Adelaide festival.<\/p>\n In March 2024, she posted on X: \u201cArmed struggle is a moral and legal right of the colonised and brutalised\u2026 Western governments which use the blood of Palestinians as the ink to write international law have zero authority to define genocide, terrorist, self-defence, resistance, proportionality.\u201d<\/p>\n She has advocated for making spaces \u201cculturally unsafe\u201d for Zionists and appeared to laud Hamas terrorists who infiltrated Israel on October 7, 2023. In interviews, she has refused to acknowledge the murder of Israelis, and one day after the devastating attack, she changed her Facebook profile picture to a Hamas terrorist in a hang-glider, depicting one of the methods the terror group used to infiltrate Israel.<\/p>\n She also wrote a post on X in October 2024 saying: \u201cThe goal is decolonisation and the end of this murderous Zionist colony.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the Australian Daily Telegraph, Abdel-Fattah once wrote: \u201cTo hell with you all. Every last Zionist. May you never know a second\u2019s peace in your sadistic miserable lives.\u201d<\/p>\n In\u00a0an interview on\u00a0Sky News Australia just days after the October 7 massacre, Abdel-Fattah said that she \u201cdoes not see Hamas as a terrorist organization,\u201d and that the attack on southern Israel was inevitable after \u201cevery avenue of peaceful resistance\u201d had been shut down.<\/p>\n Focus on antisemitism after Bondi shooting<\/p>\n Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday announced a national day of mourning would be held on January 22 to remember those killed in the December 14 shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n The authorities have called the shooting an act of \u201cterror,\u201d and the police allege that the father and son suspects were inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group. The incident sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism and prompted state and federal government moves to tighten hate speech laws, which have spurred a debate on freedom of speech.<\/p>\n Among the participants who had pulled out of the festival after Abdel-Fattah was disinvited were former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, British author Zadie Smith, Australian author Kathy Lette, Pulitzer Prize-winning American Percival Everett and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, Australian media reported.<\/p>\n Pulp said in a statement that its management had told festival organizers last week the band would withdraw from the arts festival in support of the boycott.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is our understanding that the festival programmers are now acting in good faith. The festival board that made this dreadful decision have been replaced, and a full apology has been accepted by Randa Abdel-Fattah, who has been invited to appear next year,\u201d the band said.<\/p>\n It said it would perform in a concert on February 27.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tA rabbi (center) delivers a sermon as mourners gather in front of tributes laid in memory of victims of a terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, on December 20, 2025. (David Gray\/AFP)<\/p>\n
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