For one week in January, a rare moment of moral clarity seemed to emerge at the prestigious Adelaide Writers’ Week festival in Australia—a recognition that words are not uttered in a void, but carry real consequences.

That moment, however, was fleeting. Almost as soon as it appeared, it evaporated, retreating to a familiar posture: one that says targeting Jews and Israel is acceptable, even laudable, while any challenge to those doing so is an unforgivable transgression.

On Jan. 8, the Adelaide Writers’ Week board canceled the scheduled appearance of writer Randa Abdel-Fattah, who had previously appeared in 2023. This followed the December 2025 Bondi Beach mass shooting in Sydney, where 15 people were murdered and dozens of others injured by Islamist terrorists at a Chanukah event. While the board stressed that it was not suggesting that Abdel-Fattah’s writings were connected to the attack, it concluded that, given her past statements, it would not be “culturally sensitive” to proceed so soon after Bondi.

The father-and-son gunmen responsible for the massacre reportedly recorded a video manifesto condemning “Zionists,” underscoring how language that dehumanizes Jews moves from rhetoric into violence—a transition the board briefly acknowledged, before completely reversing course.

Abdel-Fattah has acknowledged writing that Zionists “have no claim or right to cultural safety” and that everyone who opposes racism must “ensure that every space Zionists enter is culturally unsafe for them.” And in a publicly reported post in December 2024, she said: “May 2025 be the end of Israel. … May we see the abolishment of the death cult of Zionism.”

Given that the overwhelming majority of the world’s Jews identify as Zionists—in the sense that they support Israel’s existence and Jewish self-determination—it could be interpreted that such language effectively targets Jews themselves. As Martin Luther King Jr., whose national holiday is observed in the United States this year on Jan. 19, is widely reported to have observed, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking antisemitism.”

Abdel-Fattah has acknowledged that, the day after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, she changed her social-media icon to a Palestinian paraglider, later saying that she was unaware of the scale of the attack and insisting that she does not support the killing of civilians. Paragliders were among the methods Hamas and Palestinian operatives used that day to carry out their border invasion and ensuing slaughter.

At a children’s pro-Palestinian event at the University of Sydney in April 2024, where she spoke, primary-school-aged children participated in chants including, “5, 6, 7, 8, Israel is a terrorist state” amid calls for an intifada.

Writers, of all people, understand the persuasive power of words and their ability to normalize ideas—good, bad and ugly.

Since the Oct. 7 massacre, antisemitism has surged around the world at levels not seen since the 1930s, including in Australia, where incidents have risen 5.5 times, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Chants such as “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada” are not harmless slogans. They are calls for violence with real-world consequences—consequences made painfully clear on Bondi Beach. As New South Wales Premier Chris Minns observed, “There has to be a recognition that words have consequences.”

Yet more than 180 writers pulled out of the festival in solidarity with Abdel-Fattah. Accusations included the death of freedom of speech, the so-called denial of Palestinian voices and predictable allegations of racism, even though Abdel-Fattah’s cancellation had nothing to do with her ethnicity and everything to do with the content of her posts.

The irony is hard to miss, given that she supported calls in 2024 to rescind the invitation to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is Jewish—a move that was ostensibly rejected by the board, but which, in fact, led them to cancel his appearance by citing “timing” issues, according to Friedman.

Ultimately, this year’s festival was canceled amid numerous resignations and a reshuffling of the board.

Yet within days, the board apologized and then fully retreated—retracting its original statement and inviting Abdel-Fattah to appear at next year’s festival.

And just like that, the fleeting moment of moral clarity was gone.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Back in February 2023, I noted that the Adelaide Writers’ Festival, a supposed festival of ideas, had instead become a festival of hate. Of the roughly 200 writers appearing that year, seven were billed as being from “Palestine” and none from Israel.

Some of those writers had used some of the most vile antisemitic language imaginable. Israel was described as an “abomination.” Jews were likened to Nazis. Israel was accused of deliberately infecting Palestinians with COVID-19, while “Zionists” were said to possess an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood and land.”

Still, amid this violent and dehumanizing language directed at Israel and Jews, there were no moral crises, no mass resignations and no boycotts. The festival proceeded with little interruption.

Far from being about the free exchange of ideas, the Adelaide Writers’ Week festival remains what it has long been: an exercise in political grandstanding and virtue-signaling. Marketed as an exploration of truth, those responsible for its programming have decided that some truths—particularly those involving the deliberate targeting of Israel and Jews—are too inconvenient to be explored at all, and so, must be blocked from the outset.

The post Writers’ block at the Adelaide festival appeared first on JNS.org.