Defending to the death the right of another person to say something of which you disapprove has gone way out of fashion. We are deeply entrenched in a rolling festival of censorious silencing, with a sideshow of disingenuous posturing. Where is it taking us?
Festivals are lightning rods for outraged campaigns of censorship; the purpose of their existence is to provide a platform for contestable ideas. That irony seems to be lost on many.
So it is that the Adelaide Writers’ Week finds itself in the eye of a storm, as a calibrated campaign is rolled out against its organisers’ decision to include two particular writers on its program this year.
Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American novelist, and Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet, are polarising figures, part of a contemporary tradition of extremely outspoken critics of Israel and in particular Israel’s attitude towards, and treatment of, Palestinian people.
Incendiary language
Both have made many public statements that could be described as incendiary. They have used language of which I definitely disapprove to promote ideas, some of which I think is indefensible.
The Israel and Palestine dispute is the most intractable in human history and there seems to be no hope that will ever change. Everything anyone says about it is contestable and contested. Both sides deploy logic and language that match the actual violence on the ground, as a direct reflection of how little respect and goodwill remain. Without taking a side, that much should be obvious.
Caught between these eternal antagonists are festival organisers, sponsors and speakers. When the Israeli embassy gave some sponsorship money to the Sydney Festival in 2022, supporting a Sydney Dance Company production of an Israeli choreographer’s work, a boycott was called and intense pressure was placed on anyone connected to the event to pull out. Many performers did. Afterwards, the festival’s board announced it was suspending all foreign government funding. How exactly that was a good outcome for the arts I don’t know.
Likewise, the situation in Adelaide now. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has already buckled, extraordinarily announcing he will boycott his own state’s literary festival.
MinterEllison, a law firm that is a major partner of the Adelaide Festival (of which the Writers’ Week is a part), has announced it is removing its “presence and involvement” with the writers’ festival and, for good measure, its branding from the entire wider festival program.
Why? MinterEllison says: “We have recently been made aware of the participation by Ms Abulhawa and Mr El-Kurd … and, in particular, of certain public statements made by Ms Abulhawa and Mr El-Kurd. We do not agree with those views. We have strongly expressed our reservations to the festival. We have sought the festival’s assurances that no racist or anti-Semitic commentary should be tolerated as part of Mr El-Kurd’s or Ms Abulhawa’s or any other festival session or any other festival session.”
Irreconcilable differences
Notions of racism and anti-Semitism are at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Some advocates for the Palestinians argue they are the victims of ethnic cleansing, an apartheid regime or even genocide. On the other side, criticism of Israel or its actions is fairly routinely equated with anti-Semitism.
Rather than try to arbitrate the irreconcilable, I’ll point this out: there is an obvious paradox presented when you have both sides of an argument insisting the other should not be allowed to voice their views, because they’re racist, while maintaining with equal force that they themselves should not be silenced.
One solution might be to allow those views to be expressed. This is where the position taken by MinterEllison meets a difficult challenge: it has adopted the stance that certain speakers must not be heard, because somebody else has asserted that what they will say will be racist. That is both pre-emptive (nobody knows what they’re going to say) and controversial (will it be hate speech, or just a radical opinion?).
It’s the last place a sponsor wants to find itself. However, it was sponsoring a writers’ festival, as part of an arts festival. It’s fair to wonder what it was expecting, given the purpose of the arts is to open space for ideas and let them be explored. The Writers’ Week’s theme is “Truth Be Told” — according to its director, “the notion of truth — truths we acknowledge, truths we feel are debatable and those beyond debate”.
Of course, blaming sponsors for running for the exit, or presenters for deciding it’s too hot to turn up, is pointless. No individual or company has a responsibility to risk their personal or commercial interests for a principle, even one as profound as free speech. We’re all free agents, and we can avoid conflict if we choose to.
I just wonder what is achieved by this desperation to prevent voices from being heard, artistic expression from being experienced, opinions from being challenged, in conditions that don’t involve rockets or guns.
Silence is not peace.
Disclaimers: Michael Bradley will be a panellist at Adelaide Writers’ Week. Private Media, parent company of Crikey, is a client of MinterEllison.
What is being ignored in the two sidesism is the power imbalance between the colonised and the coloniser and the injustice of it all. Israel is a racist endeavour. (I therefore must be an anti-Semite) Israeli’s 2018 Nation State Law has codified the Apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem to make Jerusalem’s undivided capital. . Just as we need to hear First Nations voices we also need to hear the voices of the dispossessed Palestinians living under occupation for more than 55 years and the 15 year siege of 2 million people in Gaza without fresh drinking water and intermittent electricity because Israel holds the levers. It’s an international disgrace, and US billions is enabling the injustice to continue.
I have a lot of sympathy for the desperate Palestinians, and very little indeed for the ruthless Jews perpetrating unconscionable brutality – I guess I must be anti-semitic too…but I think there are a lot of quite reasonable Jews who are also anti-semitic on this basis.
Isn’t anti-semitism being anti-Jewish, not anti-Israel’s policies?
Anti=Zionism.
Agree
However, some time ago Zionists decided they had to do something about those who took care to distinguish their anti-Zionist views from any sort of antisemitism. So Zionists have worked hard to muddy the waters, such that many people no longer recognise or care about any difference between the two. This gives Zionists a powerful stick with which to beat anti-Zionists, and it is used to great effect. However, while smearing anti-Zionists as antisemitic presumably is advantageous to Zionists, the same tactic must also make antisemitism look more defensible by associating it with the well-founded arguments of anti-Zionists. It may turn out to be not as clever as the Zionists believe.
Muddy away!
My Jewish German grandfather survived the pogrom of Cologne in 1908/09, his mother didn’t.
His older sister was sent to relatives in Canada and he was shoved onto a ship as a cabin boy aged 10, his father said just don’t come back to Germany.
He didn’t. He jumped ship for the final time in Adelaide. He found a letter from his father waiting at Poste Restante, a very old fashioned service of the Postmaster General’s service certainly not offered anymore.
The last communication my grandfather received from his father was just prior to the start of WW1 reporting that with poverty prowling, killing Jews was the only driving force. Goodbye, I love you, have a good life in Australia.
He watched in alarm as the Balfour declaration was made and rising alarm after WW11, when Jews were encouraged to settle in Palestine. He was opposed to Israel on the basis that it was a Christian conspiracy to put all the Jews in one place, so that they could be wiped from the face of the earth.
So, he was an Anti-Zionist, not an Antisemitic
Israel’s terrorist behaviours are worrying because there may come a time when Israel is wiped off the earth and the surviving Jews are left bereft. Excuses for the Israeli’s activities will come to naught.
I too am Anti-Zionist, not Antisemitic and I sincerely believe that the Israeli’s are terrorists.
Well…
Semite
/ˈsiːmʌɪt,ˈsɛmʌɪt/
Learn to pronounce
noun
a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.
So antisemitism applies to anyone who is anti jew or anti Arab.
Agree.
Ruthless Israelis. Terminology counts, as does accuracy. There are Arabs in the Israeli defence forces too including Bedouin, Druze, Christian and Muslim. There are reasonable Jews both inside and outside Israel. There are reasonable Jews who may have a different point of view to you.
As I’ve said before:
You can be anti Zionist and not anti semitic;
You can be anti Zionist and anti semitic;
You can be on the left and be anti Zionist and not anti semitic; and,
You can be on the left and be anti Zionist and anti semitic.
Go figure.
And you can be pro-Zionist and anti-semitic – eg. the fascists called neo-(word starting with N for people who march under a crooked cross), who are both anti-semitic at home because of their prejudice against Jewish people but pro-Zionist internationally because Israel beats the pulp out of Muslims. (They are ignorantly unaware that Israel also beats the pulp out of Palestinian Christians.)
Try the separate concepts of Anti-Zionist (anti-Israel) and Antisemitic (anti-Jew/ ish/ people).
I have no problem with the practice of Judaism.
I have a big problem with a religious nation state /planned /created on occupied lands, by English fundamentalist Christians in the early 1900’s, trying to create the conditions for the Coming again of Christ.
Jesus on a bicycle WWTT?
There is no disputing that Palestinians must be given a voice – and perhaps a more dominant voice than that given to Israelis, given the power imbalance you refer to. So the fact that the Adelaide Writers Week has invited seven Palestinians and no Israelis should probably not in itself be a matter of concern.
However, when the public statements of two of those invited amount to vicious hatred, it is not unreasonable to question whether their presence in Adelaide should be in any way supported. I’m sure the other five speakers could adequately represent the Palestinian position.
I will be attending Writers Week to hear decent, respectful discussion and debate – not vicious bile and hatred.
Well said, Chris.
A bit more context provided here to the incendiary comments by the two writers https://www.newarab.com/opinion/adelaide-fest-susan-abulhawa-mohammed-el-kurd-must-speak
Australian Palestinian writer and academic, Randa Abdel-Fattah give more context to the incendiary comments of Susan Abdulhawah and Mohammed El Kurd: Nobody has bothered to ask: when did El-Kurd post his Tweets? Why hasn’t the context of the May 2021 bombing of Gaza been mentioned? Why is El-Kurd simply a name, a headline, an accusation, not a human being who has grown up under a brutal settler-colony, apartheid regime and occupation and who at the age of 11, returned home to find half his house taken over by illegal Israeli settlers?
Why has nobody mentioned the footnote to that line of poetry: ‘They harvest organs of the martyred, feed their warriors our own’? A footnote reference to a news story in which the Israeli government admitted to harvesting organs from bodies of Palestinians, as well as some Israelis, without their families’ consent in the 1990s.
Why is there outrage at Abulhawa accusing Israel of kidnapping and torturing children, not the actual fact and evidence that Israel kidnaps and tortures Palestinian children?
This year’s program includes writers who are displaced, dispossessed of their land and in exile. Significant space has been provided for First Nations, Ukrainian and Palestinian writers’.
Spot-on, Jo. MuckRacker’s Adelaide Advertiser has had saturation coverage of this, but nowhere does it report on what these two writers actually said and nothing about its context – in fact, no Palestinian voices at all.
The Ukrainians have pulled out, Jo – and why should they not, when Abulhawa is being given a platform for her outrageous falsehoods?
Louise Adler has brought all this on herself and the Writers Week will be the poorer for it.
The reason the “dispute” is unresolvable is not because “Everything anyone says about it is contestable and contested”
It’s because one side receives $5 billion a year in funding from the USA and operates the 6th strongest combat force in the world.
The other side has rocks and firecrackers.
The dispute is well on its way to a resolution, which will be complete when one side renames the map of both regions defined by the UN to be 1 region.
If this sounds cryptic, search for
Changing map of west bank
Wondering if it is ever possible to criticise the actions of the Netanyahu government without being subjected to the charge of ‘anti- semitism’?
My wife is Jewish – she thinks Netanyahu is an arsehole with no redeeming qualities and has said so. And, of course ……
The stupid thing is, of course, both Jews and Arabs are Semites, and most of the “anti-semitic” malarky is coming from virtue signalling westerners who love to jump onto a bandwagon.
I answer that my grandfather was Jewish and he opposed Israel.
The proposal for a modern state of Israel was for a long time opposed by the majority of Jews. The proposal to set up a Jewish homeland only began to pick up serious support among Jews, as a consequence of the horrors of WWII. The current direction being taken by its government tends to vindicate the Jews who said at the start it was a very bad idea.
From the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2008, pages 54, 56
Since its inception as a political movement in 1897, both Reform and Orthodox Jews have rejected Zionism’s basic premise of creating a Jewish state in Palestine and having Jews either emigrate to it or, at the very least, view it as “central” to their Jewish identity. An overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews, unwilling to accept the restoration of a Jewish state in Palestine by means other than divine intervention, considered Zionism a false messianic movement.
NOTE: the last paragraph in the above is a quotation, but somehow the formatting was lost when I hit ‘send’.
Thanks Rat. Not well known that it’s not just progressive liberal Jewish people, but also many orthodox Jewish people who oppose the whole Zionist project, not just the barbarity and excesses of the current Zionist state. Kinda makes the ‘anti-Semitic’ tag sound ridiculous. But doesn’t stop the simpletons from using it.
Madbot is being feral again. I’ll try again:
Thanks Rat. Not well known that it’s not just progressive liberal Jewish people, but also many orthodox Jewish people who oppose the whole Zi*n*st project, not just the barbarity and excesses of the current Z*o*i*t state. Kinda makes the ‘anti-Semitic’ tag sound ridiculous. But doesn’t stop the simpletons from using it.
Think you’re getting a bit muddled indeed wrong saying a majority of Orthodox Jews do not support Israel. There are some ultra orthodox (for want of a label) who don’t support Israel but they are a minority. Orthodox Judaism is multi faceted and you’re generalising about a small facet.
No, I’m quoting facts that are familiar to everyone who knows the history of Zionism from its beginnings at the end of the 19th C. You are being muddled by only looking at the present day.
I’m quite familiar with the history of modern Zionism. The historical origins are one thing but the reality for a long time now is another in relation to not just orthodox Judaism. Indeed the Soviet Union too was once the main supporter of Israel as you probably know. Relevance now? Nada.
Whatever. What I posted was accurate. You replied it was muddled. I pointed out it was not. You continue handwaving and trying to cover up your mistake with waffle. Enough.
Very important actually, because Putin is always looking for a place to place a wedge and drive it in.
Orthodox Jews do hold a variety of opinions. The ones I know do not blur the differentiation between being opposed to Israel and opposed to Judeaism.
Of course it is: and there are many Jewish groups who are very opposed to Netanyahu. There are even some like me who are very uncomfortable with the idea of a “Jewish state”, and want to clearly distinguish between Israelis–including Arab Israelis–Palestinians and people of Jewish religion or heritage who feel no ties to Israel
That’s a silly and nonsensical argument. Most Israeli’s including Jewish Israelis criticise the Netanyahu Government.
However if one uses terms such as organ harvesting as a means of dehumanising then yes one can rightly be accused of anti semitism. If you read the text books used in schools about Jews by Palestinians (funded by the EU etc) then you’ll see the tip of the Muslim anti semitic iceberg.
First of all, it would appear to be a question, rather than an argument.
Secondly, conflating criticism of Israeli government policies with charges of anti-Semitism has been a longstanding tactic with which to silence critics and which, despite being obvious and false, has had a fair degree of success to this day.
(Many Jewish Israelis do, of course, criticise the Netanyahu government. Some escape the charges. Some others get described as ‘self-hating jews’.)
But unless I read your reply incorrectly, your response to the question of whether it is possible to criticise the Netanyahu government without being called anti-Semitic is to refer us to how some Palestinian Muslims are really anti-Semitic, which is just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, which is ‘funded by the EU etc’ (?)
Cheers, no doubt the use of the label anti semitism is used far too often when criticising Israel. At the same time however it is used (mostly by elements on the so called left far too often when it is anti semitic) which then closes down argument in a converse way.
The link to Muslim anti semitism using the Palestinian example ( there are many more) is to raise this issue as it is largely ignored / not known / not talked about. Accordingly while expressing solidarity with the awful plight of Palestinians one needs to be mindful not to be simplistic in any discussion of Israel.
Hmm, what’s the bad word…
Not much to add, except that over the decades the assymetry of the situation is what stands out to me; Israel enjoys $20b a year in military aid from the US, not to mention the consideration of a great many well-placed sympathisers and even flat-out Zi*nists in other governments, particularly that of the US.
So it seems at least somewhat disingenuous any time someone says the truth is in the middle, when you’ve got chickenhawks with Jewish names illegally sending the US to fight in Arabic countries on the strength of outright lies, illegal settlements continually being built by Israelis in Palestine, while Palestinians walk around with scars from white phosphorus Israeli war crimes.
When Zi* nists have a sook about Palestinians defending themselves, what do they want to see? A people turning the other cheek for another boot on the throat, with a please sir, may I have some more?
It’s more than a bit rich.
They just want the Palestinians to pack up and leave.
Migrate to the US?
The US aid to Israel is much closer to $US4 billion and not sure why the use of ‘Zi* nists’ …
Because the sensitive (if not censor-happy) Crikey bot objects to the proper name.
If so, the ModBot is wildly inconsistent about it. Even with posts from the same author. But then, the ModBot moves in mysterious ways; ours not to wonder why…
This decision will upset a lot of people. Andrew Bolt will be livid at such a brazen example of “cancel culture”, the ever vigilant young James “China”Patterson will be equally appalled by such blatant foreign interference in Australia’s internal affairs and last but not least, the local z*onst lobby will no doubt be outraged, given that they have spent years banging on loudly about the unalloyed evil of using boycotts for political ends.