Bendigo Writers Festival uproar

Pro-Palestine activists are in a perpetual state of outrage over recent events surrounding the Bendigo Writers Festival (BWF).

The BWF is sponsored by La Trobe University, which is hardly a hotbed of Zionist advocacy. Nevertheless, the BWF and La Trobe University have become targets of anti-Israel activists and their keffiyeh-adorned useful idiots.

Since 2012, the BWF has been a winter gathering of writers, readers and “creative thinkers” for various events aiming to celebrate storytelling and books, and foster conversation and inspiration. This winter, it became a magnet for vitriol and political extremism.

One of the planned panellists in the festival lineup was the Palestinian-Australian academic and author Randa Abdel-Fattah. At the end of July, the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A) wrote to the organisers and La Trobe University, raising concerns about Abdel-Fattah’s “antisemitism and anti-Israeli rhetoric, which has even been acknowledged by her Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie University. She perpetually dehumanises people who hold Zionist views and condemns them as not worthy of human dignity.”

The letter pointed out that the academic had posted on her Instagram account that Jews have “no claim or right to cultural safety.” It is a “duty… to ensure that every space Zionists enter is culturally unsafe for them.”

Abdel-Fattah has also targeted her fellow academics, saying, “I refuse to cite anybody who has remained silent over Gaza, no matter how authoritative and big they are in their respective fields… they are deficient human beings.” She labelled fellow academics “cowardly white supremacists”. 5A expressed concerns that she was divisive and undermined social cohesiveness.

The organisers of the BWF responded by distributing a code of conduct before the opening of the festival, aiming to avoid antisemitism and Islamophobia and foster respectful debate. It pointed to the University’s anti-racism policy. The code of conduct calls to “avoid language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful”. This resulted in Abdel-Fattah withdrawing from the festival, along with over 50 other participants. They claimed that the code of conduct prohibited them from discussing what they claimed was the “genocide in Gaza”.

The fringe Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) dismissed 5A’s description of Abdel-Fattah, calling her a long-standing ally of the JCA. Max Kaiser from JCA called 5A a “right-wing pro-Israel lobby group”, despite it clearly having members from the right and the left.

The anti-racism plan is a 19-page document which includes the following: “This plan has been developed at a time when we are witnessing a rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as the national impact of the unsuccessful referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. These events have unfolded within a broader climate of increasingly vocalised public intolerance, where political discourse and public rhetoric have, at times, emboldened racist views and behaviours.”

There is a half-page definition of Islamophobia, formulated by the university’s working party on Islamophobia and half a page on antisemitism. The “working” definition of antisemitism adopted is the one approved by Universities Australia, which represents 39 universities. Nowhere does it say that you can’t criticise Israel. But it does say that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic” if people use stereotypes and call for the “elimination of the state of Israel or all Jews”. It seems that those who withdraw from the festival and their supporters have homed in on only one small part of the anti-racism plan.

A quite disturbing element of the current fiasco is that supporters of those who withdrew from the festival have pressured (bullied?) those who remained as speakers, panellists or even attendees to also withdraw.

One is a prominent author and long-time vitriolic Israel hater and Palestinian activist, Samah Sabah, who posted on social media, “EVERYONE has an obligation to turn their back to the Bendigo Writers Festival. Any writer or anyone in the industry who plays along pretending business can go on as usual will be tarnished. Your presence is a statement.” Others on social media are creating lists of people who did not withdraw from the festival because, “It is important for me to know, when buying books, whether or not the author is a genocide/apartheid normaliser, and therefore complicit.” This is reminiscent of Stalinist purges and the Night of the Long Knives.

In the end, the BWF was held and about half of the events appear to have been completed successfully.