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By Ari Ingel, Executive Director, CCFP
What has unfolded at Adelaide Writers’ Week is not a misunderstanding born of heightened emotions, nor an unfortunate clash of values. It is a systemic failure of judgment, governance and leadership, from top to bottom, and one that has inflicted real harm on Australia’s Jewish community at a moment of vulnerability in the wake of the massacre at Bondi.
To be clear, this did not begin with the decision to disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah. It began with the decision to entrust the leadership of a major national literary institution to a director who had previously supported the boycott of a noted Jewish author, and who has made extremist remarks about the world’s only Jewish state, remarks that echo the language of a modern-day blood libel.
Louise Adler should not have been leading Adelaide Writers’ Week.
Her own public statements — including describing Israel’s actions as “genocidal” and framing scrutiny of extremist anti-Israel rhetoric as a form of McCarthyism — should have been disqualifying, particularly at a time of record levels of antisemitism in Australia.
Her remarks are incompatible with the responsibility of stewarding a major cultural institution that serves a diverse national audience, including a Jewish community for whom Israel is not an abstraction but the historical and national homeland of the Jewish people. A place of refuge.
In her worldview, to support Israel is to be labeled a supporter of genocide — and that framing has consequences.
Once Israel is cast as a Nazi-like state committing the ultimate crime of genocide, Zionism ceases to be a political position and becomes a moral stain. Because approximately 95% of Jews worldwide support Israel in some form, this logic renders Jews everywhere complicit in genocide. Jews are no longer innocent, but supporters and enablers of evil — and therefore legitimate targets.
We all saw the consequences of such language play out on December 14, 2025, at a Hanukkah celebration, when light turned to darkness.
Furthermore, in 2024 Adler supported efforts to have noted Jewish New York Times columnist and award-winning author, Thomas Friedman, disinvited from Adelaide Writers’ Week because of his views on Israel, despite his views often being very critical.
The Friedman incident alone should have prompted serious concern from the board. Combined with Adler’s rhetoric, it should have led to her removal long before this current crisis erupted. That it did not, renders the recently resigned board culpable. Governance is not passive. It requires intervention when leadership fails.
It also goes without saying that Abdel-Fattah should never have been invited to Adelaide Writers’ Week, a failure that further underscores why Adler should have been dismissed rather than permitted to resign.
Abdel-Fattah’s extremist remarks were well known and deeply troubling long before her invitation was issued. She has repeatedly described Zionism — a core component of Jewish identity for the overwhelming majority of Jews — as racism. She has argued that it is a “duty” to deny Zionists cultural safety, language that mirrors the logic historically used to exclude Jews from public life. She has openly called for sanctions against Israel.
Most egregiously, on October 8, 2023 — the day after Hamas carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — Abdel-Fattah posted imagery celebrating the paraglider motif used by Hamas terrorists to infiltrate Israel and massacre over a thousand civilians, as they raped, brutalised and kidnapped innocents. This included the murder of over 350 young people at the Nova music festival, itself a cultural gathering devoted to celebrating life through arts and culture.
At a time of record levels of antisemitism, and in the immediate aftermath of mass Jewish slaughter, such conduct should have rendered her unfit for a prestigious public platform. The fact that it did not speaks volumes about Adler and the festival itself.
And to be clear, this should not be a debate about censorship. That is how the anti-Israel community has distorted the conversation. This is about the active fomenting of hatred and antisemitism.
Cultural institutions curate. Editors exercise judgment. Festivals decide whom they elevate. Declining to platform someone who has demonstrated open hatred toward a persecuted minority is not censorship; it is common decency.
Indeed, the selective nature of this newfound absolutism on “free speech” exposes the hollowness of the claim.
In 2024, Abdel-Fattah publicly supported a boycott call to have Friedman dropped from Adelaide Writers’ Week, signing onto an open letter to the board.
To the anti-Israel movement, free expression, it seems, is negotiable — depending on the speaker. This double standard is a defining feature of contemporary antisemitism, and now, suddenly, Abdel-Fattah is playing the victim. Palestinianism, in a nutshell.
The subsequent collapse of Writers’ Week and the new board’s response have only compounded the damage. The victims are once again the Jewish community of Australia, yet they are being recast as the aggressors.
Apologies have flowed — but conspicuously not to the Jewish community, which has borne the consequences of this failure. Instead, contrition has been directed toward those whose activism precipitated the crisis, while the community that has experienced a profound sense of betrayal has been left unacknowledged.
That is unacceptable.
The former director, the former board, and the current board all owe Australian Jews a clear, unequivocal apology — not for hurt feelings, but for abandoning their duty of care. For fomenting antisemitism. For creating an environment in which hostility toward Jewish identity was minimised, excused or rationalised. And for doing so at a time when Jews are confronting escalating fear, grief and isolation.
The only thing the board got right was cancelling Writers’ Week, since the rot runs deep and the current board should step down immediately as well.
If Adelaide Writers’ Week cannot operate without eroding the trust of a community that has contributed so profoundly to Australia’s cultural life, then its suspension is not a loss. It is a corrective.
To be clear, Australian Jewry was just targeted again. This is yet another attack in a long line over the past few years in a coordinated effort by a movement to silence the Jews of Australia and push them to the margins — or out of the country altogether.
Until those responsible are willing to reckon with their own failures, no apology — however eloquent — will suffice.
Cover Photo: Asset id: 2565890935 – Adelaide, South Australia, Australia – December 11 2024: Adelaide Convention Centre, on North Terrace, seen across the river Lake Torrens. Low angle view. Copy space in water
