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The Adelaide festival board did not dump a Jewish columnist from its 2024 lineup at Adelaide writers’ week, despite being lobbied by a group of 10 academics – including Randa Abdel-Fattah – to do so.
On Saturday South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas, claimed that the board had dumped the New York Times pro-Israel columnist Thomas Friedman in 2024, and reiterated his support for the festival board’s decision on Thursday to remove Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian Australian academic, from this year’s program.
“I note the Adelaide Festival also made its own decision to remove a Jewish writer from the Adelaide Writers’ Week program in 2024 in very similar circumstances,” Malinauskas told the Guardian through a spokesperson on Saturday.
“I support that decision, and the consistent application of this principle.”
On Saturday News Corp publications picked up on the premier’s statement, reporting the apparent inconsistency between the public outcry against Abdel-Fattah’s removal compared with the alleged removal of Friedman two years earlier, which did not ignite the massive boycott the writers’ week is now seeing, making the 2026 event look increasingly untenable.
Guardian Australia has independently confirmed that more than 70 participants have now withdrawn.
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Abdel-Fattah and nine other academics sent the Adelaide festival board a letter on 6 February 2024, requesting it rescind the invitation to Friedman, who had published a controversial column days earlier, which compared the Middle East conflict to the animal kingdom.
However, in a letter seen by the Guardian, the festival board rejected this petition to remove Friedman.
“Asking the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers Week to cancel an artist or writer is an extremely serious request,” the letter stated. It was dated 9 February 2024 and signed by the Adelaide festival board’s chair, Tracey Whiting.
“We have an international reputation for supporting artistic freedom of expression. Thomas L Friedman was programmed to contribute online from New York. However, I have been advised that due to last-minute scheduling issues, he is no longer participating in this year’s program.”
The Guardian sought comment from Friedman in New York.
The letter suggests that Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the 2026 event was the first time the board has not supported the programming decision of its director, Louise Adler.
After the announcement of her cancellation on Thursday, Abdel-Fattah accused the board of “blatant and shameless” anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.
She told Guardian Australia on Sunday she rejected any allegation of hypocrisy, having called for Friedman’s removal from the festival in 2024.
“Friedman’s widely criticised NYT article compared various Arab and Muslim nations and groups to insects and vermin requiring eradication at a time when talk of ‘human animals’ was being used to justify wholesale slaughter in Gaza,” she said in a statement.
“We were concerned about the impact of Friedman’s views on socially and historically marginalised people who have been dehumanised and discriminated against by the use of such racist tropes. Indeed, one of the examples we supplied was how Jewish people have historically been likened to vermin.
“In contrast, I was cancelled because my presence and identity as a Palestinian was deemed ‘culturally insensitive’ and linked to the Bondi atrocity.
“I was cancelled because I, a Palestinian, have been a vocal advocate against the actual extermination of my people.”
Abdel-Fattah suggested it was the festival board who had acted hypocritically, given it had cited its commitment to “artistic freedom of expression” in its 2024 response to the Friedman matter.
“All such supposed values were discarded when it came to cancelling me,” she said.
In the column, Friedman compared the US to an ageing lion, Iran to a parasitoid wasp that infects and kills caterpillars (Lebanon, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq), Hamas to a trap-door spider and Benjamin Netanyahu to a sifaka lemur.
Friedman subsequently acknowledged that some of his readers, including colleagues, felt insulted by what he had written, finding it dehumanising and invoking racist tropes. He wrote: “If invoking a metaphor or image alienates and angers part of my audience, I know I used the wrong metaphor … I would never want to leave anyone feeling insulted, even if I hit the mark with others.”
In its statement on Thursday, the festival board said that while it did not suggest “in any way” that Abdel-Fattah or her writings had any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, the decision was made “given her past statements”.
Abdel-Fattah previously faced sustained criticism from the Coalition, some Jewish bodies and media outlets for controversial comments about Israel, including alleging that Zionists had “no claim or right to cultural safety”.
“We have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi,” the statement said.
“We understand these Board decisions will likely be disappointing to many in our community. We also recognise our request to Dr Abdel-Fattah will be labelled and will cause discomfort and pressure to other participants. These decisions have not been taken lightly.”
In 2023 Adler refused to dump the Palestinian authors Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd, despite major sponsor withdrawals and boycotts from Ukrainian writers.
Adler argued that festivals should be “brave spaces” for confronting difficult ideas through literature, rather than “safe spaces” designed for consensus.
At the time, the board supported her in that decision, and Malinauskas publicly stated that while he was “genuinely disturbed” by some of the two authors’ views, it was not for politicians to “decide what is culturally appropriate”.
The South Australian government appoints members to the festival board but a spokesperson for the premier told the Guardian the government had no power to direct the board in its decision-making processes over artistic programming.
