I have never been so proud to call myself a writer. To belong to a group of people who support a targeted colleague, who mobilise quietly with integrity and solidarity. Without self-interest. A group that has moral courage when our elected leaders and our decision-makers seem to have none.
Last week the board for the Adelaide Writers Week told Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah that her attendance at the annual event would not be ‘culturally sensitive’ in the wake of the Bondi massacre that happened on December 15. So they withdrew her attendance. This act infers she is somehow linked to an act of mass murder. This toxic narrative endorsed by SA Premier Peter Malinauskus has been a call to action for our brightest minds.
Did the board not realise that by erasing Randa they would erase their festival?
Did they not realise that writers are not products stocked neatly on supermarket shelves? That writers have this thing called ethics. Something bigger than money or influence. That they will not be complicit to the silencing of authorial voice? That’s why they are writers. How can you be on a board of a writers’ festival and not actually understand what writers’ festivals are for, and who writers actually are?
It’s a growing figure, but as I pen this, over 100 authors have left the Adelaide Writers Festival. The board chair has resigned, along with three board members. 11 former leaders of the festival also condemned the decision, sending a letter to the board and the SA premier that said, ‘wickedness thrives in darkness, and prejudice thrives in ignorance born of silence.’ Ouch. There’s currently less than 24 writers left on the bill. I won’t be buying their books.
Writers more than anyone, understand the consequence of cancelling a Palestinian-Australian author. They understand the political and social implications of the silencing. The message it sends to the community and the message it sends to the world about who we are, and what kind of conversations we are prepared to permit in our public space.
In a mainstream media landscape where journalism across many channels has become thinly disguised propaganda funded by political interests, writers are our beacons of hope. It’s a simple yet complex craft. They use the written language to inform, entertain, persuade or inspire. Their work is about building knowledge and culture, reflecting society, engaging our empathy by exposing us to the human experience in long form. They help us see who we are and why we do what we do. And cancelling Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is, as she has said, ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’ Once again, it’s the writers who have shown us who we are, and the narratives we are prepared to erase.
The human experience is nuanced. It is never one thing. Writers understand that the atrocity and mass murder that happened in Bondi on December 14 does not erase the existence of the genocide in Gaza, and the experience of Palestinians who continue to be killed. We do not lose permission to have both conversations. We can hold both.
It is not antisemitism, it is antifascist.
Buy the books of the many authors who have shown courage. Most importantly, buy Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel Discipline. Let this attempt at silencing, amplify her voice.
Genocide is cultural erasure.
And cancelling a Palestinian-Australian author is cultural erasure.
Show the world who we are. That we are not complicit.
The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
