Australia’s prestigious Adelaide Festival is confronting significant backlash and mounting boycott calls following its controversial decision to cancel Palestinian-Australian author Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah’s scheduled appearance. The festival board justified its action by citing concerns about “cultural sensitivity” in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack that occurred during a Hanukkah celebration in December.
In an official statement released Thursday, the festival board clarified they “do not suggest in any way that Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi,” but referenced “her past statements” as the determining factor. This rationale has sparked widespread condemnation across Australia’s literary and academic communities.
Dr. Abdel-Fattah, a prominent scholar and award-winning novelist, denounced the decision as “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism” in her response on social media platform X. She rejected any association with the Bondi massacre, stating the board’s reasoning suggests “my mere presence is ‘culturally insensitive’; that I, a Palestinian who had nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity, am somehow a trigger for those in mourning.”
The cancellation has triggered a domino effect of withdrawals from the festival’s Writers’ Week program. At least eleven authors have officially withdrawn their participation, with prominent writer Jane Caro declaring “authoritarianism is rising” and refusing to participate in what she characterized as the festival’s “censoring [of] ideas it does not like.”
Poet Evelyn Araluen announced her boycott, asserting that “removing Palestinians from writers’ festivals won’t prevent antisemitism,” while expressing disappointment at “yet another absurd and irrational capitulation to the demands of a genocidal foreign state from the Australian arts sector.”
The Australia Institute, an independent think tank that was sponsoring festival events, has withdrawn its support, stating that “censoring and cancelling authors is not in the spirit of an open and free exchange of ideas.”
Social media platforms have erupted with calls for a comprehensive festival boycott, with users praising the withdrawing authors and condemning what many characterize as racist censorship. One user emphasized that “Palestinians had absolutely nothing to do with the Bondi shooting,” while another noted it’s “very disturbing that so many institutions can reproduce vicious assertions without evidence about the link between Palestinian rights campaigns and the Bondi killings.”
This incident marks the second time Dr. Abdel-Fattah has been at the center of censorship controversies in Australian literary festivals, following a similar incident at the Bendigo Writers’ Festival in 2025 where she was among 50 authors who boycotted over censorship concerns.
The Adelaide Festival has not responded to media requests for comment regarding the growing backlash and boycott movement.