What began as a powerful anti-Palestinian campaign by a few Zionist organisations and individuals turned into a victory for Adelaide Writers' Week (AWW) and the Palestinian writers who attended.
The sessions featuring the Palestinians, particularly those held in conjunction with Australian First Nations writers, were phenomenally popular; hundreds of people attended these sessions.
As Louise Adler said, “People are free to deeply object. They don’t have to come. Or come, and you don’t need to agree with what people think. But people listened. These steadfast Adelaide audiences came out in their thousands and listened with courtesy and respect for the conversation. It should be something that lifts the spirits of all of us.”
“The definition proposed for adoption by the South Australian parliament is one devised by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (or IHRA). It is a flawed definition because it singles out one group of people for special treatment. This motion is specific to Israel and to Israel only. The motion moved by One Nation’s Sarah Game gives Israel a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
The motion itself determines the ways in which we might be allowed to criticise Israel without finding ourselves labelled as antisemitic.”
"Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has said that the motivation for the kidnapping was the murder of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces in May 2014; the autopsy report which showed that the teens were killed by Israeli soldiers’ live fire had been made public the day before the kidnapping. In the aftermath of the abduction, Israel launched a crackdown on alleged Hamas associates in the West Bank."
"Addressing a large audience, Mandela said that the Nation-State Law passed in 2018 declaring Israel to be the historical homeland of the Jewish people "confirmed what we have always known to be the true character and reality of Israel: Israel is an apartheid state". He also outlined what had constituted apartheid for black South Africans - from the creation of bantustan reservations to land expropriation and the daily assault on dignity."
"The Supreme Court in Israel has only been able to question the legality of this policy in a few individual cases, but not in principle. Imagine if in the United Kingdom or the United States, Jewish citizens, or Catholics for that matter, were barred by law from living in certain villages, neighborhoods, or maybe whole towns? How can such a situation be reconciled with the notion of democracy?"
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