Former Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler has warned progressive Australian Jews against allowing the royal commission into the Bondi massacre to be dominated by “pro-Israel propagandists”, urging them to fight against “McCarthyites” trying to shut down free speech.
In a fundraising email for the left-wing Jewish Council of Australia sent this morning, Adler wrote that “as the royal commission comes to life, the pro-Israel lobby has renewed their campaign to silence any criticism of Israel, to outlaw protest and constrain free speech”.
“This well-oiled machine has already cost us the most significant writers’ festival in the country,” she said.
“Now, these McCarthyites are threatening to criminalise university students and defund public institutions that dare to fulfil the essential promise of the arts: to inquire, to complicate, to challenge.”
Adler resigned and this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week was cancelled after an uproar over the board’s decision to cancel an invitation to Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Jewish groups have raised concerns about social media posts by Abdel-Fattah appearing to celebrate the October 7 attacks in Israel and saying that Zionists do not deserve cultural safety.
“A long line of propagandists has deliberately argued that the mere Palestinian-ness of an author is a sufficient threat to the Australian Jewish community that they should not be permitted to participate in public life,” Adler wrote in her email.
“They have, with great effect, convinced decision-makers that what is good for Benjamin Netanyahu and his murderous regime in Israel is good for all Jews in Australia also. They have already successfully inflected the Albanese government’s so called hate speech legislation. What next?”
Adler wrote that “we must not allow the pro-Israel lobby to speak for Jews as a whole, we must not accept the racism fomenting in the aftermath of the tragedy at Bondi. As witnesses are called to give evidence to the commission, it is essential to present an accurate picture of the Jewish community in Australia”.
Read the full article here
