Being on summer break the last few weeks, I've had more time than usual to stay abreast of current events in the news. Frankly, this hasn't been at all good for my state of mind.
Apart from the usual floods, fires and other disasters that typically happen at this time of year, there's been a healthy dose of Trump behaving like Trump, the Iranian government slaughtering thousands of its citizens, ICE agents in Minnesota shooting a couple of people for looking at them the wrong way and Marnus Labuschagne still being in the Australian cricket team.
However in spite of all this, the story that I've been following that's really set me off has been the hullaballoo over the Adelaide Writers Festival and the circumstances that led to both its cancellation and the resignation of the entire festival board, caused initially by the refusal to allow the Palestinian-Australian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah from appearing.
Imagine for a moment that an Israeli or other Jewish author had wanted to attend the festival, but had either published material on-line or been interviewed both scoffing at the civilian victims of the Gaza incursion and calling for Palestine to be wiped off the map. Given the delicate state of the current ceasefire and the scale of human suffering caused in Gaza (by what, frankly, has been a cynical over-reach by Netanyahu and his government to extend the hostilities in order to avoid or delay their prosecution for corruption), the inclusion of this author in the programme would clearly be inflammatory and insensitive. Therefore, if you were the organiser of the festival you'd be well within your rights to say, sorry pal, you can't come. Moreover there is no way that this decision would cause a mass boycott by authors planning to attend the festival.
So when a Palestinian author fronts up wanting to attend but is on the public record mocking the Israeli hostages seized in the October 7 attacks and basically calling for the eradication of Zionists, surely with the Bondi massacre fresh in everyone's mind, it's also appropriate for a person with such inflammatory views to be refused permission to attend? No problem with that? At least that's what the organisers thought.
However, in doing so they clearly didn't understand or appreciate the idiotic group-think of so-called modern "progressives", in whose judgement double-standards don't apply when you are dealing with an "oppressed" group like Palestine and an "oppressor" group like Israel.
Cue a boycott of about 180 authors, led by the prodigiously untalented Trent Dalton (has anyone else read that "Boy Swallows Universe" dross, what a miserable and unoriginal load of codswallop that was) followed by the inevitable cancellation of the whole thing - after all there's no show without Punch.
But that wasn't enough to satisfy the shrill outrage of the mob. Following the cancellation, the whole board of directors of the festival had to resign and the organisers were forced to issue an apology to Abdel-Fattah for impugning her "right to free speech". Never mind that she was almost certainly going to use her platform to pour more scorn and insults on Jews still suffering from the aftermath of the Bondi massacre.
Then again, this sort of thing is the ugly face of what modern "progressiveness" has become. If you are a person with a public profile who dares disagree with whatever cause they are promoting, no matter how patently ridiculous it is, then be prepared for these people to stop at nothing to destroy your reputation and livelihood. Just look at the vitriol hurled in J K Rowling and Graeme Linehan's direction for daring to suggest that someone who looks like a man and still has all the genitalia of a man, perhaps shouldn't be legally allowed to call themselves a woman and inhabit "women-only" spaces.
It's a real pity because until not so long ago, "progressives" used to stand for noble and just causes - to name a few, the abolition of slavery, civil rights, anti-discrimination laws, no-fault divorce and more recently, marriage equality for gay people. Nowadays their only cause-celebres seem to be supporting repressive or terrorist Islamic regimes that oppose the USA and Israel; transexuals; imposing world-record economy-screwing COVID lockdowns; and ruining the lives of anyone who disagrees with them. I can't help but wonder what great proponents of reform from yesteryear like William Wilberforce and Martin Luther-King would make of preferred pronouns and cancel culture. I don't think they'd be particularly impressed.
It's tempting just to roll your eyes at these authors and their idiotic way of thinking and move on because thankfully, other than at universities, this nonsense hasn't really taken root in the real world. However I believe in this instance it needs to be called out because what went on last week just adds to the already tangible dangers facing Jewish Australians.
Like a lot of people I got irritated by the selfish and inconsiderate rent-a-crowd that used to invade the city every single f..ing Sunday (funny isn't it how their weekly crusade about slaughtering innocents has suddenly stopped in the wake of the Iran government's actions - oh that's right, Iran is the enemy of their enemy Israel so any atrocities they get up to are just fine by them).
However my main gripes at the time were the appalling waste of police resources having to follow these morons around all day and the impact on businesses and people enjoying their weekend. It was only in the wake of the Bondi massacre that I realised these incessant marches with their Hamas flags and slogans calling for an end to Israel had a more insidious effect by slowly but surely normalising the hatred of Jews. Which is what the decision of these authors in defending a vindictive anti-semite like Randa Abdel-Fattah is doing as well.
As someone who lives in a suburb where a lot of Jewish families live, even before October 7, I realised a long time ago the hatred of Jews is real. The local synagogue on Balaclava Road has been heavily secured on Saturday morning for as long as I can remember as have many of the Jewish schools in the area.
Since the Gaza incursions in the aftermath of the 7 October kidnappings things have got a whole lot worse with the local Hannukah festivities previously held in Caulfield Park having to be held behind closed doors at Caulfield Racecourse, and synagogues and Rabbis in Elsternwick being regularly targeted. This despite the vast majority of the people attending being either locally born or from places other than Israel and therefore having little or nothing to do with what the government of that country does.
Hardly a "safe place" to practice your faith now, is it, modern progressives? It's therefore not surprising in hindsight that with governments tolerating these endless anti-semitic protests that some zealot Islamic nutjobs became emboldened to take things to the next level and open fire on the festival at Bondi.
Encouragingly since the Bondi tragedy, some governments have shown some real intent and leadership in standing up to the "progressive" movement and are taking steps to stamp out anti-semitism. Not Jacinta Allan of course, she's shown as much interest in policing these weekly rallies as she has in stamping out criminality in the CFMEU, ie. none. Although admittedly she has been busy implementing Victoria's unelected and unrepresentative third chamber of Parliament.
Not Albanese either, by nature always a fairly timid politician, his objection to holding a Royal Commission might seem bizarre to some but it no doubt stemmed from a fear of being subjected to the same type of pressure heaped on the Adelaide Writer's Festival organisers and leaking votes to the Greens.
Full marks though to Chris Minns in NSW and Peter Malinauskas in SA, the first for standing up and making a strong stand against anti-semitism including banning "rent-a-crowd" rallies for the time being, and the latter for standing up to Abdel-Fattah, who predictably seeing he has dared to disagree with her, is now threatening to sue him. Geez I hope she loses convincingly in court and has to pay millions in costs.
As for the 180-odd writers who boycotted the festival, I'm going to give you a taste of your own "progressive" medicine and cancel you from my book collection (past, present and emerging). Based on my experience of Trent Dalton's work I don't expect that I'll be missing much.
