Top Australia arts festival apologises for barring Palestinian writer

By Kirsty Needham

SYDNEY, Jan 16 (Reuters) – A major Australian arts festival has apologised to a Palestinian Australian writer after disinviting her over her remarks about Israel, sparking a controversy that forced the cancellation of this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week.

The Adelaide Festival Board on Thursday retracted the decision to bar academic and novelist Randa Abdel-Fattah, inviting her back for next year’s event and apologising to her “unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her”.

The board on Tuesday cancelled the writers’ week, a premier Australian literary event and part of the Adelaide Festival, after 180 international and Australian authors boycotted it over Abdel-Fattah’s ban. The writers’ week director, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author.

The festival’s original board resigned in response to the backlash.

ABDEL-FATTAH ACCEPTS APOLOGY BUT SAYS IT’S NO ‘QUICK FIX’

“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,” the new board said in a statement.

Abdel-Fattah accepted the apology “as acknowledgement of our right to speak publicly and truthfully about the atrocities that have been committed against the Palestinian people”, but said in a post on X that “it is not a quick fix to repair the damage and injury inflicted.”

She said she would consider the invitation to the 2027 event in the state of South Australia.

After Abdel-Fattah accepted the apology, the British band Pulp said they would perform at the Adelaide Festival, reversing their boycott.

Last week, the festival board said it had disinvited Abdel-Fattah from the writers’ week because, “given her past statements”, it would not be culturally sensitive to include her in the event “so soon after Bondi”, a reference to last month’s shooting rampage on a Jewish event that killed 15.

The board did not cite any specific statement made by Abdel-Fattah that led to her being disinvited. It said it did not suggest any of her writings have any connection with the Bondi Beach shootings.

Abdel-Fattah’s past comments about Israel have been criticised by some Jewish and pro-Israel groups, and the Jewish Community Council of South Australia had lobbied against her participation at the Adelaide festival.

In March 2024 she posted on X: “Armed struggle is a moral and legal right of the colonised and brutalised… 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.”

FOCUS ON ANTISEMITISM AFTER BONDI SHOOTING

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.

The authorities have called the shooting an act of “terror”, and the police allege that the father and son suspects were inspired by the Islamic State militant 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.

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.

Pulp said in a statement its management had told festival organisers last week the band would withdraw from the arts festival in support of the boycott.

“It 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,” the band said.

It said it would perform in a concert on February 27.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Praveen Menon and William Mallard)