Today’s Australian carries a page one story by David Penberthy. He reveals that the Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa has issued yet another vile tweet. This time describing the Jewish American civilian Elan Ganeles – who was murdered on the West Bank recently by Islamist terrorists – as “human garbage”.
As avid readers will recall, Media Watch Dog covered the leftist stack that is the 2023 Adelaide Writers Week on 10 February and again on 17 February. The lack of diversity in the program – including the fact that AWW director Louise Adler invited seven Palestinians to discuss the Middle East but no Israelis – has drawn attention to the vile anti-Semitic comments of Ms Abulhawa and fellow visiting AWW speaker Mohammed el-Kurd. This is also discussed in the current segment of “Can You Bear It?”
Ruth Mackenzie, the artistic director of the Adelaide Festival, of which Adelaide Writers’ Week is a part, was interviewed this morning by Patricia Karvelas on ABC Radio National Breakfast. The final discussion turned on the criticism of AWW concerning the lack of balance with respect to Palestine/Israel and the evident anti-Semitism of Abulhawa and el-Kurd.
It was a tough but fair interview – in which Abulhawa’s tweet re the late Elan Ganeles was not mentioned. Ruth Mackenzie, in a look-over-there contribution, avoided any reference to anti-Semitism. She referred to AWW’s Kids Day and declared that authors were in Adelaide “because they’re artists and writers; they’re not here because of their social media accounts”. Mackenzie referred to comments about the controversial tweets – implying that what someone writes on social media can be completely disassociated from what they write in books.
Read this take by Gerard Henderson on remarks made by Ruth Mackenzie, the artistic director of the Adelaide Festival.