Ukrainian and Jewish leaders have condemned Adelaide Festival Writers Week for giving a platform to an author who has defended Vladimir Putin and another who accused Israel of staging its own Nazi “Kristallnacht” against the Palestinian people.
But the festival and its Writers Week director, former Melbourne University Publishing chief executive Louise Adler, are standing by the program on free speech grounds and saying sessions will go ahead as planned.
Next month’s Writers Week features Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, a fierce critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky whom she has described as “a depraved Zionist trying to ignite World War III”.
Abulhawa has written several tweets saying the war is Ukraine’s fault for trying to join NATO, and other tweets simply declaring “DeNazify Ukraine”, a line frequently used by the Kremlin to defend its invasion.
“This man is no hero. He’s mad and far more dangerous than Putin,” Abulhawa wrote of Mr Zelensky on Twitter last year one month after Russia launched its illegal assault.
Another session features Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd who has written scores of tweets which have been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as anti-Semitic and which have prompted the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to write expressing outrage to Adelaide Festival organisers.
Read the article by David Penberthy in The Australian.