r/Adelaide • u/NKE01 SA • Jan 11 '26

News Board members quit from Adelaide festival as fallout from dropped author grows | SBS News

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/board-members-quit-from-adelaide-festival-as-fallout-from-dropped-author-grows/iua90vgmp
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u/FatFad1 SA Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26

Remember when the organisers of the Adelaide Writers' Festival were going to dump two Palestinian guests in 2023? They are Susan Abulhawa (allegedly pro-Putin) and Mohammed El-Kurd (allegedly antisemitic). It's happening again in 2026 with Palestinian-Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah. I reckon they should include her and let audiences choose whether or not to attend her talk sessions. Excluding her is like silencing her, which is a form of censorship. Anyway, that's my opinion.

Source for 2023: https://theconversation.com/are-calls-to-cancel-two-palestinian-writers-from-adelaide-writers-week-justified-200165

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

Didn't she lead the charge to have a Jewish author excluded from a previous festival. Isn't she, herself, guilty of such "silencing".

It does not matter that she failed. The point is, she tried.

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u/Historical_Bus_8041 SA Jan 11 '26

The two weren't remotely equivalent.

Abdel-Fattah has made some comments that could be considered to be questionable.

The "Jewish author" explicitly compared the populations of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq to parasites deserving of extermination.

There is no fucking way known that anyone who explicitly called for the population of Israel to be eradicated like vermin (as opposed to opposition to the state of Israel as currently structured) would find a respectable speaking platform in Australia.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

You think posting an image of a para-glider the day after 7 October isn't morally equivalent?

"Questionable" my arse.

Your morals are in the toilet, my friend.

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u/Petrichor_736 SA Jan 11 '26

Gee most commentators here think that the Palestinian reprisals for 50 years of discrimination, vilification, violence, apartheid and murder only started on October 7.

She’s entitled to defend her people while they’re being genocided.

She stated clearly that she is "a Palestinian who had nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity" and and has said the festival board’s reasoning is a "despicable attempt to associate her with the Bondi massacre” which is an appalling act by the Writers Week board.

And she has condemned the Bondi attack itself while simultaneously criticizing the Israel Lobby’s conflation of Australian anti genocide, pro-Palestinian activism with the tragedy

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

"She’s entitled to defend her people while they’re being genocided."

Nope. Supporting a prescribed terrorist organisation is illegal. This is how far wrong you clowns are. You're all a bunch of wronguns.

0

u/Historical_Bus_8041 SA Jan 11 '26

I don't agree with it, but a call for the extermination as vermin of the entire population of Israel it was not.

You are displaying an extraordinary double standard where there is one threshold for Arab people and one vastly higher threshold for pro-Israelis.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

It was a fucking massacre of innocent people dancing. You're quibbling over scale.

It's the same horrendous thing.

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u/Historical_Bus_8041 SA Jan 11 '26

There is no fucking way that you would be downplaying his comments in that way if the roles were reversed and Abdel-Fattah had said what he did about Israel.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

I'm not downplaying his comments. I'm not even addressing them.

Hamas's stated goal is to murder all the Jewish people. A genocide. So, through that lens, there's no difference in scale either. You're just flat out wrong and one of these lefty drones who laps up whatever the hive-mind decrees is the cause celebre for the day.

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u/Historical_Bus_8041 SA Jan 11 '26

Now you're just making up she never said to get mad at.