When authors of hate speech are invited to our writers festivals, it’s time to worry and to lament.
Anti-Semitism has come out. Emerging from years of subtle innuendo, out from its various hiding places and guises, it is again showing its ugly historical face. It is again being normalised and made acceptable.
When Volodymyr Zelensky is described as a “depraved Zionist trying to ignite world war III”, it is Zelensky the Jew who is being demonised. He has never asserted his Zionism. When Zionists are accused of harvesting the organs of Palestinians and lusting after their blood, there is no mistaking the reference to age-old blood libels against the Jewish people.
I call on Louise Adler, who invited the authors of these atrocities to Adelaide Writers Week, to disinvite them. And I call on her to resign.
My book publishing companies are represented by 15 authors at this festival and I do not call on them to boycott the event – it’s their festival, not Adler’s. I hope they are all there, and I encourage my publishing staff to attend, to continue their important work, and not have it stolen from them, from the writers, nor from the reading public.
Read the letter by Morry Schwartz, publisher, Melbourne in The Australian.