I am going to Adelaide Writers Week. At this rate, I may be only person there.
I exaggerate, obviously., but there is a protest under way. Some sponsors – specifically, Minter Ellison – have withdrawn, as have some writers, and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas says he won’t go, either.
I’m not grand enough to imagine it matters whether I go or not – I’m very far from box office – but shouldn’t good folk everywhere be protesting the inclusion of two Palestinian writers, whose views are revolting?
Well, first up, who are they?
Susan Abulhawa is basically a shill for Putin, which is quite the hill to die on.
Mohammed El-Kurd has accused Israeli soldiers of “harvesting the organs” of Palestinians, which is Nazi propaganda, and clear-cut anti-Semitism.
These views are abhorrent. But to say that bad ideas, revolting opinions and disgusting diatribe shouldn’t be heard is … well, that’s a bad idea.
Bad ideas should be aerated, then mocked.
Here’s a fine example, from our recent past: the American journalist Dorothy Thompson was one of few female foreign correspondents working in Europe in the 1920s.
She was not Jewish but quickly recognised the threat to Jews from the rise of Nazism.
A decade or so before the SS began burning books, she read Mein Kampf. She would later say she immediately “recognised it for what it was … … nonsense. One long speech filled with lunatic diatribes about nations and races.”
Read the article by Caroline Overington in The Australian.