A popular Australian festival has been scrapped after a mass pro-Palestine walkout.
Adelaide Writers' Week was cancelled after around 180 authors withdrew from the event in protest.
The mass walkout followed the festival board's decision to drop Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian-Australian academic and novelist based in Sydney.
British author Zadie Smith was among the first high-profile names to pull out - while former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern followed suit on Monday.
Leading Australian writers Trent Dalton and Helen Garner also joined the boycott, alongside Russian-American author Masha Gessen.
The festival had been scheduled to begin on February 28.
But its board removed Dr Abdel-Fattah from the programme amid a backlash to her "anti-Zionist" posts - and general sensitivites in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack.
Two gunmen killed 15 people and injured dozens more during a Chanukkah celebration on December 14 at the Sydney beach.
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah was dropped from the festival
|MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY
More than 1,000 people were enjoying festivities by the sea when attackers opened fire.
The festival board vowed it was not suggesting "in any way" that Dr Abdel-Fattah or her writing had any connection with the attack.
But they said that, given her past statements, "it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to programme her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi".
Dr Abdel-Fattah had been due to discuss her new novel, Discipline, which is said to explore themes of truth and censorship.
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15 people were killed in the Bondi Beach attack in December | REUTERSShe faced criticism for social media posts saying Zionists had "no claim to cultural safety" and labelling institutions that considered "fragile feelings of Zionists" as "abhorrent".
She also drew criticism for posting an image of a paraglider with a Palestinian flag parachute as her Facebook profile picture the day after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
She has since apologised for that post.
The event's director, Louise Adler, stepped down on Tuesday morning.
She said she could not "be party to silencing writers".
Adelaide Writers' Week was scrapped after a mass pro-Palestine walkout (file photo)
|GETTY
Writing in The Guardian, Adler said she was quitting "with a heavy heart … Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us. We need writers now more than ever, as our media closes up, as our politicians grow daily more cowed by real power, as Australia grows more unjust and unequal."
When announcing the cancellation on Tuesday, the festival apologised to Dr Abdel-Fattah for "how the decision was represented".
The board said the situation reflected "a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation" following Australia's deadliest terror attack.
Dr Abdel-Fattah rejected the apology, calling it disingenuous and saying it "adds insult to injury".
She wrote on Instagram: "It is clear the board's regret extends to how the message of my cancellation was conveyed, not the decision itself."
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