From disinvitation to apology: Abdel-Fattah and the Adelaide Festival fiasco

The new board of the Adelaide Festival has issued an unreserved apology and issued an invitation to Palestinian-Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah to Writers’ Week 2027, reversing a controversial January decision that led to the event’s collapse.

Executive director Julian Hobba sent an email today (Thursday) to festival supporters, stating the organisation failed to uphold its commitment to intellectual and artistic freedom. The apology represents a complete about-face from the festival’s January 8 statement, which had cited “cultural insensitivity” concerns following the Bondi terror attack as justification for withdrawing Abdel-Fattah’s invitation.

That initial decision triggered an unprecedented boycott. More than 180 writers withdrew in protest, director Louise Adler resigned, and the entire festival board disbanded. This year’s Writers’ Week has been cancelled.

Abdel-Fattah has faced significant criticism from Jewish community leaders and politicians over her social media posts and public statements. On October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, she posted an image on Facebook showing a paraglider silhouetted against a Palestinian flag, a clear reference to the paragliders Hamas used during the attack. This was widely interpreted as celebrating the October 7 massacre, though Abdel-Fattah has claimed it was a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

In March 2024, she posted on social media that Zionists “have no claim or right to cultural safety” and that “it is the duty of those who oppose racism, misogyny, homophobia and all forms of oppressive harm to ensure that every space Zionists enter is culturally unsafe for them.” She has also been criticised for refusing to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organisation and for dismissing reports of sexual violence during the October 7 attacks as “atrocity propaganda”.

Additionally, in February 2024, she was linked to promoting a leak of private conversations from a WhatsApp group of Jewish Australian creatives and academics.

Three days after the Bondi massacre, Abdel-Fattah posted on social media, criticising those “quickly surrendering to the agenda of those who are using a horrific act of antisemitism to entrench anti-Palestinian racism,” which drew further condemnation from Jewish leaders and politicians.

The newly appointed board has accepted responsibility for the collapse of this year’s festival and scrapped an earlier proposal to establish a board subcommittee overseeing Writers’ Week programming. Hobba stated the board now supports curatorial independence while maintaining overall accountability for event delivery.

Adding complexity to the controversy, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has apparently stated he was uninvited from the 2024 festival, contradicting earlier reports suggesting he withdrew voluntarily due to scheduling conflicts.

Friedman had initially been invited to appear via video link but was later informed the timing wouldn’t work—a decision he accepted without objection.

Abdel-Fattah and other academics had previously called for Friedman’s removal following a column using animal kingdom analogies to describe Middle East conflicts. Former board member Tony Berg stated Adler and senior staff threatened resignation if Friedman remained on the programme. Adler has not addressed these claims.

Berg criticised Adler’s public resignation statement, in which she said she couldn’t participate in silencing writers, as inconsistent with Friedman’s removal. He also questioned Abdel-Fattah’s framing of herself as a free speech advocate.

Speaking to the Adelaide Advertiser, Norman Schueler, Public and Government Liaison for the Jewish Community Council of South Australia, expressed disappointment with the reinstatement. He had previously written to organisers calling for Abdel-Fattah’s removal and supported the board’s initial decision to disinvite her.

Following the reversal, Schueler said he was surprised by the level of public support for Abdel-Fattah and stated that “the public has not been made aware of the fact that she was cancelled for a reason, that she imbued hatred into the Australian community.” He also criticised the participating writers who withdrew, calling their boycott “rather pathetic” and suggesting they agreed with Abdel-Fattah’s position “that Israel should not exist.”

Lynda Ben-Menashe, president of the National Council of Australian Women, criticised the reinstatement, arguing that the festival was platforming hate speech and rape denial.

“Free speech is a powerful human right, as is the right to be protected from hate speech,” Ben-Menashe said, describing Abdel-Fattah’s participation as “a stain on Australia’s cultural life.”

She suggested that proper writers’ festival programming would involve placing Abdel-Fattah on stage with Thomas Friedman for “a robust intellectual conversation”. She concluded by stating, “We look forward to the day when all writers enjoy the cultural safety that Abdel-Fattah insists must not be accorded to Zionists.”

Abdel-Fattah accepted the festival’s apology, describing it as vindication of collective resistance to censorship. She suggested her participation in 2027 may depend on Adler’s reinstatement as director.