Australian writers’ festival canceled after anti-Israel Palestinian writer booted

SYDNEY, Australia — One of Australia’s top writers’ festivals was canceled on Tuesday, after 180 authors boycotted the event and its director resigned, saying she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author and warned moves to ban protests and slogans after the Bondi Beach mass terror shooting threatened free speech.

The novelist and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah said the move to bar her was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.”

She herself has advocated for making spaces “culturally unsafe” for Zionists and appeared to laud Hamas terrorists who infiltrated Israel on October 7, 2023, to carry out a massacre, changing her profile picture to a hang glider a day later.

The Adelaide Festival board says its decision last week to disinvite Abdel-Fattah, on the grounds it would not be culturally sensitive for her to appear at the literary event “so soon after Bondi,” was made “out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event.”

“Instead, this decision has created more division and for that we express our sincere apologies,” the board says in a statement.

The event would not go ahead, and remaining board members will step down, it adds.