Professional services company PwC Australia has followed the lead of MinterEllison and distanced itself from the Adelaide Festival because of its support of two Palestinian authors whose social media posts have drawn controversy and led to accusations of antisemitism.
The firm removed its logo from the Adelaide Festival website on the weekend and issued an all-staff memo on Tuesday explaining its actions in response to speakers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd.
Mohammed El-Kurd and Susan Abulhawa are on the program at this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week.Credit:Instagram/T Sauppe
Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American activist and novelist who has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a depraved Zionist”, and poet El-Kurd, who said Zionists had completely internalised the ways of the Nazis”, are slated to speak at Adelaide Writers’ Week, which starts this weekend.
“PwC Australia is the auditor of the Adelaide Festival Foundation, which provides financial support to the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week. We conduct this audit on a pro bono basis as an acknowledgment of the contribution the Adelaide Festival Foundation makes to the South Australian economy and arts sector. We do not have any role in the Festival’s programs,” the memo said.
“We condemn in the strongest terms any antisemitic comments and any suggestion of support for Russia’s war against Ukraine. We stand with the Jewish and Ukrainian communities who have been understandably hurt by this issue. In this respect we have asked the chair of the Adelaide Foundation that any association of PwC with this aspect of the festival be removed.”
French multinational IT company Capgemini has also revoked its funding arrangement with the festival, and three Ukrainian writers due to participate have now boycotted it.
Abulhawa, who is an author and executive director of the Palestine Writers Literature Festival, has responded to the criticism on Twitter, saying: “The people working overtime to silence me and Mohammed are afraid of our words and our pens, because they do not have a convincing argument against an indigenous struggle for liberation from colonisers.”
Abulhawa, whose debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, is considered a classic in Palestinian literature, is expected to attend several sessions in person, including one exploring the power of literature to reimagine what has been distorted in the real world.
El-Kurd, currently the Palestine correspondent for The Nation and author of RIFQA, his debut collection of poetry, is due to be live-streamed from New York for two sessions this Sunday and next Tuesday. Alongside his twin sister Muna, he was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2021.
Peter Wertheim, the CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said the expression of solidarity by PwC with the Jewish and Ukrainian communities in Australia was heartening, as was its decision to remove PwC’s logo from the Festival website.
“Australians rightly place a high value on the right to free speech, and have long recognised that the proper limits of that right are exceeded when it is exploited to disseminate racism and hate propaganda, whether emanating from the far right or the far left. Neither is acceptable.
“Adelaide Writers Week cannot be a forum for dialogue and debate when only one side of the argument about Israel is allowed to be presented by multiple speakers, with not a speaker with a contrary view being given a platform. Nor can the discussion be meaningful, still less respectful, when two of the speakers have a long record of making derogatory generalisations about entire national or ethnic groups,” he said.
The Zionist Federation of Australia also welcomed PwC’s disassociation from the Adelaide Festival.
Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week Louise Adler was unavailable for comment. This masthead has also sought comment from Abulhawa and El-Kurd.
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