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.”
"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."
"My mother, Taube, and father, Abraham, survived Auschwitz among other horrors. My father was the only survivor in his family of six children and my mother survived with only one sister in a family that was larger than my father’s. I know, without question, that if they were alive today, the motion you are being asked to endorse would terrify them given the repression of tolerance and witness that it clearly embraces."
"As a Jew, my relationship with Israel developed against a backdrop of the separation barrier, settlements and the open air prison that is Gaza. The repetitive and incessant violence that occur in the occupied territories is devastating. Watching the news this weekend as more rockets and retaliatory attacks erupted once again towards Gaza, it would be easy to give in to a sense of hopelessness."
"He said the topic has been "out of bounds" for too long[.] "As progressives, we should also speak up for human rights for Palestinians, and for too long, I think, it has been out of bounds for progressives to speak up for the rights of Palestinians," said the father of two. The Grammy, Tony, Emmy and Oscar winner added: “It is a progressive point of view to speak up for the rights of Palestinians.”"
"Today, we can only speculate about where King would stand. Yet I find myself in agreement with the historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who concluded that, if King had the opportunity to study the current situation in the same way he had studied Vietnam, “his unequivocal opposition to violence, colonialism, racism and militarism would have made him an incisive critic of Israel’s current policies.”
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