Australian arts festival apologizes for disinviting Palestinian writer who lauded Oct. 7 |
SYDNEY, Australia — A major Australian arts festival has apologized to a Palestinian Australian writer after disinviting her over her support for Hamas, endorsement of violence against Israel and backing for the elimination of the Jewish state, 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 apologizing 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.
“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 Adelaide, South Australia.
After Abdel-Fattah accepted the apology, the British........