HOW ZIONISM DESTROYED A WRITERS' FESTIVAL

The political pressure applied by the Australian Zionist lobby to have Australian Palestinian writer and activist Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah banned from the Adelaide Festival Writers Week, has led to the collapse of the entire festival.

THE COLLAPSE of the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week under the weight of Zionist pressure could well become a case study in how cultural institutions can lose their nerve when confronted with organised political intimidation. What unfolded was not a debate about ideas, but a demonstration of how swiftly a festival can abandon its own principles when a powerful lobby — namely the Zionist lobby — decides that certain voices must not be heard. 

The controversy erupted when the festival decided to 'disinvite' a prominent Australian Palestinian writer, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. That Abdel-Fattah is an outspoken critic of Zionism and Israel's genocidal rampage in Gaza should not have provoked the response it did. Writers’ festivals exist precisely to host difficult conversations, to bring together perspectives that challenge, unsettle, and provoke. Instead, a coordinated campaign by Zionist organisations and sympathetic politicians framed the inclusion of Abdel-Fattah as an endorsement of 'anti-semitism'. Sponsors were pressured, journalists were lobbied, and the festival’s leadership was bombarded with demands to withdraw the invitation.

Rather than defending the integrity of its program, the festival capitulated. Abdel-Fattah was 'disinvited', because of alleged 'sensitivities' after the shooting of 15 people – by gunmen allegedly inspired by the Islamic State militant group – at a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach in December. Though the Adelaide Festival's board said they were not suggesting that Abdel-Fattah had 'any connection with the tragedy at Bondi', they argued that it would not be 'culturally sensitive to include her given her past statements'.

But everyone understood what had really happened: a cultural institution had been bullied into silencing a prominent critic of Israel. The message to writers was unmistakable. Certain political positions—particularly those that challenge Zionism or expose the brutality of Israeli policy—are now to be treated as beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse.

Abdel-Fattah said the decision to exclude her was a 'blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship' and the attempt to link her with the Bondi attack was 'despicable'.

In the following days, dozens of other writers scheduled to appear withdrew from the festival, which also features music, dance, theatre and other cultural events.  By Tuesday the list had jumped to 180, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, British author Zadie Smith, British Australian novelist Kathy Lette and left-wing commentator and economist Yanis Varoufakis.

In a letter to festival organisers, Varoufakis said he was 'appalled that the Zionist lobby determined to use the accusation of antisemitism in order to legitimise any war crime the Israeli Apartheid state chooses to commit – all in the name of Australian and Western values.'

Over the weekend, four members of the eight-member board, including the chair, resigned without detailing their reasons.

And on Tuesday the director of the Writers' Week — who had invited Abdel-Fattah — stood down too. Louise Adler, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said art had increasingly come under attack since the start of the Israel-Gaza war and that she could not be party to silencing writers.

 The 2026 Adelaide Writers Week was subsequently cancelled.

What makes the Adelaide case particularly troubling is that it occurred in a space supposedly dedicated to intellectual freedom. If a writers’ festival cannot defend the right of writers to speak, then the cultural sector has surrendered its purpose. The festival’s leadership insisted that they were protecting the event from 'division,' but that logic is corrosive. Free expression is not meant to be comfortable. Literature has always been a battleground of ideas, and festivals should be the last places to sanitise political conflict.

The broader implication is that free speech is becoming conditional, permitted only when it aligns with the sensitivities of influential groups. Zionists want their political ideology to be treated with a level of deference that shields it from scrutiny. Criticism of Israeli state violence is to be reframed as bigotry, even when voiced by Jewish writers themselves. This conflation is deliberate. It transforms political critique into a moral transgression, making it easier to suppress.

For all arts institutions, the lesson should be to resist political pressure to limit freedom of expression. The public does not need festivals that mimic corporate PR departments. It requires spaces where writers can confront the realities of war, occupation, and injustice without fear of being deplatformed by lobbyists. The Adelaide debacle shows what happens when that responsibility is abandoned: a festival loses credibility, writers lose trust, and the public loses a forum for honest conversation. 

Free speech survives only when it is exercised fully, and the cancellation of the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week has reminded everyone how fragile it becomes when fear takes its place.