\n<\/p>\n
Randa Abdel-Fattah said she accepts board\u2019s apology as acknowledgement of her right to speak about atrocities against Palestinians.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n An Australian arts festival has apologised to Randa Abdel-Fattah after it was forced to cancel its entire writers\u2019 week programme when 180 writers withdrew from the event in solidarity with the Palestinian Australian author.<\/p>\n The board of Adelaide Festival said on Thursday it was retracting its earlier decision to exclude Abdel-Fattah \u201cfrom participating as a speaker at Adelaide Writers\u2019 Week this year\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cWe have reversed the decision and will reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah\u2019s invitation to speak at the next Adelaide Writers\u2019 Week in 2027,\u201d the board said in a statement, apologising \u201cunreservedly for the harm\u201d it had caused to her.<\/p>\n \u201cIntellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right,\u201d the board said, acknowledging that it had fallen \u201cwell short\u201d of upholding that right.<\/p>\n Abdel-Fattah, an award-winning author of 11 novels, said in her own statement that she accepted the board\u2019s apology and would consider the invitation to participate next year.<\/p>\n \u201cI accept this apology as acknowledgement of our right to speak publicly and truthfully about the atrocities that have been committed against the Palestinian people\u201d and \u201ca vindication of our collective solidarity and mobilisation against anti-Palestinian racism, bullying and censorship\u201d, she said in a statement shared on social media.<\/p>\n Abdel-Fattah, who is also a lawyer and sociologist, said she would agree to appear as a speaker \u201cin a heartbeat\u201d if Louise Adler, who resigned as the director of Adelaide Writers\u2019 Week in protest at the board\u2019s decision, \u201cwas the director again\u201d, but said she had not yet decided if she would accept the invitation to appear next year.<\/p>\n Abdel-Fattah also said the board\u2019s initial decision to cancel her participation highlighted problems, including \u201cthe need for urgent antiracism education\u201d and \u201cthe need for public institutions to have safeguards against political interference by lobbyists\u201d.<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s apology came a day after the board said in a separate statement that this year\u2019s Adelaide Writers\u2019 Week \u201ccan no longer go ahead as scheduled\u201d after \u201cmany authors \u2026 announced they will no longer appear.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement said the initial withdrawal of Abdel-Fattah\u2019s invitation to speak was \u201cnot about identity or dissent\u201d but \u201caround the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia\u2019s worst terror attack in history\u201d, in reference to the Bondi Beach attack, which killed 15 people at a Jewish celebration in December.<\/p>\n Australian police have said the two men accused of carrying out the deadly shooting were \u201cinspired\u201d by ISIL (ISIS). The attack came five years after an Australian gunman killed 51 Muslims while they were praying at their mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.<\/p>\n Adler, who resigned as director of the writers\u2019 week after the board overrode her decision to invite Abdel-Fattah, said this week that at least 180 authors had withdrawn from this year\u2019s programme in protest.<\/p>\n The authors who said they would no longer participate included prominent international and Australian writers, such as Zadie Smith, M Gessen, Yanis Varoufakis, and Helen Garner, as well as former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.<\/p>\n Writing in The Guardian newspaper, Adler questioned the considerable influence that \u201cboards composed of individuals with little experience in the arts\u201d could wield over programming, and being \u201cblind to the moral implications of abandoning the principle of freedom of expression\u201d.<\/p>\n Adler, who is Jewish, also expressed concern that \u201cprotests are being outlawed, free speech is being constrained and politicians are rushing through processes to ban phrases and slogans\u201d in the wake of \u201cthe Bondi atrocity\u201d, with \u201calarming insouciance\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Randa Abdel-Fattah said she accepts board\u2019s apology as acknowledgement of her right to speak about atrocities against Palestinians. An Australian arts festival has apologised to Randa Abdel-Fattah after it was forced to cancel its entire writers\u2019 week programme when 180 writers withdrew from the event in solidarity with the Palestinian Australian author. The board of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"