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.”
"Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has announced the suspension of all agreements signed with Israel. The 84-year-old's declaration on Thursday came after an emergency meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the wake of Israel's demolition this week of several Palestinian buildings in Sur Baher village - a move Abbas described as an act of "ethnic cleansing"."
"The Palestinian Authority is expected to raise the issue of the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees at its first United Nations racism review in Geneva next month. The PA’s human rights record will be reviewed for the first time by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which will also look at discrimination issues in the Czech Republic, El Salvador, Iceland, Mexico, Mongolia and Poland."
"The energy produced is to be used for water projects including water treatment stations, thereby reducing the costs that the PA pays to import electricity from Israel. Shadi Othman, the spokesman for the EU Commission in Jerusalem, told Al-Monitor that the project will cost a total of $20.3 million, of which $9 million have been provided by the European Union and $11.3 million by the French Development Agency."
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