If the decision to remove a Palestinian author from Adelaide Writers' Week was intended to reflect intellectual awareness, it failed.DrBinoy Kampmarkreports.

BOARDS OF DIRECTORS are a funny bunch. Often lacking expertise, claiming knowledge they do not have and insight that never illuminates, its members can make the cockup the stuff of legend.

Instead of minding their own business and leaving the Adelaide Writers Week to take place without incident as part of the 2026 Adelaide Festival, an act of oafish meddling took place.

The meddling centred on removing one invited author from the speaking schedule: the Australian-Palestinian writer and academicRanda Abdel-Fattah, who was to discuss her novelDiscipline.

The Festival Boardsstatementexplaining their decision began with a note of gravity.

Then came the note of pure cowardice, framed in the bankrupt language of middle management.

Adelaide Festival has cancelled Randa Abdel-Fattahs Writers Week appearance, citing cultural sensitivity after the Bondi terrorist attacks.

Abdel-Fattahs views on the war in Gaza had evidently proven so salty as to require her deprogramming. These were not specified, though various social mediaremarksand public statements attacking this murderous Zionist colony and claiming that Zionists had no claim or right to cultural safety were bound to have featured. Her removal was heartilyapprovedby Norman Schueler of the Jewish Community Council of South Australia and the South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas.

If this decision was intended to reflect balance, intellectual awareness and understanding about the shootings on 14 December, 2025 that took place at a Bondi Beach event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, it failed on all counts.

It ignored the fact that the two shooters had been allegedly inspired by Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh), an obscurantist group indifferent to Palestinian statehood and hostile to Hamas. (The repeatedcomparisonof Hamas to ISIS by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always beenerroneousto the point of mendacity.)

It imputed a degree of responsibility to Abdel-Fattah as a Palestinian, a representative of a people systematically butchered, dispossessed and starved by the Israeli campaign. It implied that any discussion about Israels conduct in response to the Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023, onedeemedgenocidal by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a number of known human rights organisations, was insensitive.

Only the meek of opinion would be permitted, the impotent or inert celebrated.

A glance at some of the Boards membership reveals corporate blandness and brand merchants versed in the nebulous world of consultancy and communication.

No literary figures of note can be found, let alone historians, sociologists or anyone animated by what might loosely be called the liberal arts. There are or at least were, given several resignations such figures as the now ex-chair, Tracey Whiting, adept in strategic marketing, audience development and community engagement. Leesa Chessers description sounds like that of an educated canine trained in health economics and business.

Brenton Cox is all triumph and skill as managing director of Adelaide Airport. Daniela Ritorto is obviously less a journalist than a consultant about journalism, versed in strategic communications advice and, it would seem, a sought-after master of ceremonies and panel moderator.

As with Australias innumerable and atrocious university managers, the countrys cultural and artistic governors cannot be accused of having a shred of aesthetic, let alone cerebral sense for the area of expertise they purport to control. Its all show, and a rotten one too.

Clare Wright says La Trobe lacked moral courage in the Bendigo Writers Festival collapse and still hasnt apologised for its actions.

In a pugnacious statement, Abdel-Fattahcalledthe decision to scratch her attendance a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre. Her very presence would be construed as culturally insensitive, that she, as a Palestinian having nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity was somehow a trigger for those in mourning.

The Festival Board seemed to suffer the same maladies that had afflicted the organisers of the Bendigo Writers Festival last August. At the penultimate moment, they thought it wise to make writers and panellists subscribe to aCode of Conductin what could only be seen as a nasty fit of Zhdanovism. Terms such as Zionist or Zionism were to be avoided, along with topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful.

Many writers recoiled and withdrew.

Cancellation fever, however, remains very modish in Australia when talking about the destruction of Gaza or Israels adversaries, who must, by definition, be seen as playdough freaks of demonology. When pianist Jayson Gillham took issue with the brutality of Israels Gaza campaign during a 2024 recital, his contract wascancelledby invertebrate officials at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The matter is before the courts.

The artists Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino fared somewhat better, being first cancelled by Creative Australia from representing Australia at the Venice Biennale only to bereappointedafter much cutting indignation.

For Abdel-Fattah, solidarity among the scribblers abounded. Of the initial 124 participants, some 100 have withdrawn. Among them are former New Zealand Prime MinisterJacinda Ardern, British authorZadie Smith, former Greek Finance Minister and rabble rouserYanis Varoufakis, and Australian historianClare Wright. Wrightexpressedshock and insult as a Jewish Australian that the Board had exploited the tragedy of Bondi to weaponise its much-loved and respected literary festival.

Leaving aside the palpable implosion of an event that would have otherwise gone the way of most writers events, one lost in fine print and chatter, a supreme irony emerges. Abdel-Fattah, as with many writers, is not immune to the cancellation bug when it comes to those she does not like. In 2024, she added her name to a letter addressed to Adelaide Writers Week requesting the removal of Thomas Friedman from the schedule for hisremarksin the New York Times analysing the Gaza War through the prism of the animal kingdom (the U.S., predictably, a lion, if old; Iran, a parasitoid wasp; Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, caterpillars; Benjamin Netanyahu, a sifaka lemur).

Friedman has made a life of grand, insensitive readings of the human condition, fashioning revenue out of such cowpat efforts as The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but thats hardly a reason to cancel him. People like that need to be paraded as treasures of ridiculous tripe, not kept hidden to wither.

To their credit, the Festival Board then, unlike now, held firm. Even crass stupidity should have a platform.

Theresponsefrom Whiting:

Much like Whiting herself, that reputation has gone.

DrBinoy Kampmarkwas a Cambridge Scholar and is a lecturer atRMIT University. You can follow Dr Kampmark@BKampmark.