Like a zombie that refuses to die, a new ‘guerrilla’ writers’ festival has risen from the rubble of Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW). It arrives just six weeks after its taxpayer-funded predecessor imploded, following the cancellation of notorious Macquarie University academic and novelist Randa Abdel-Fattah (RAF) and a boycott by most of the writers — largely leftists, pro-Palestinians, or identitarians.

The new festival is apparently funded by the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA). AFOPA was previously able to stump up only $17,000 for spectacles for Palestinian children after fundraising in 2021, so how it has found the money for a writers’ festival in less than six weeks is not clear.

Previous fundraising targets suggested the AWW budget was north of $1.3 million. Still, one of South Australia’s richest families is Palestinian in origin and philanthropically inclined — and then there’s always Qatar, which never runs short of funds to support Hamas and those sympathetic to its unique brand of ‘resistance’.

The inaugural theme of the festival is ‘freedom of expression’. That’s an interesting concept, given that freedom of expression in Gaza, since Hamas took control in 2006, has involved tossing political opponents off buildings and publicly executing anyone who expresses a point of view with which Hamas disagrees.

One of the new star appearances at the guerrilla festival is Francesca Albanese, fresh from appearing at a conference sponsored by Qatar’s Al Jazeera in Doha, alongside another star turn, senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Ms Albanese is the United Nations’ supposedly independent human-rights ‘expert’ who has served as Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories since May 2022.

Ms Albanese created quite a stir when she spoke of Israel, in the presence of Meshaal and the Iranian foreign minister, as the ‘enemy of humanity’. This provoked outrage, with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot condemning her remarks in parliament as ‘outrageous and reprehensible’ because they targeted ‘Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable’. Foreign ministers from Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Czech Republic also condemned her tirades — and even the spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said, ‘We don’t agree with much of what she says.’

Ms Albanese’s inflammatory rhetoric includes justifying the 7 October Hamas massacre by calling Israeli civilians ‘occupiers’; claiming that when Hamas refers to killing ‘Yahudis’ it doesn’t mean Jews; alleging that ‘the Jewish lobby’ controls America; and comparing Israel to the Third Reich. As Barrot put it, ‘She presents herself as a UN independent expert, yet she is neither an expert nor independent — she is a political activist who stirs up hate,’ adding that France would demand her resignation. Will Tony Burke give her a visa? If past performance is any predictor of future action, he will.

Apart from Ms Albanese, there will be plenty of Australian Palestinians and others of Middle Eastern descent speaking, most of whom boycotted the AWW — as did others attending including former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, former Greens leader Bob Brown, and journalist Peter Greste, who was previously jailed because Egyptian authorities viewed his employer, Al Jazeera, as a mouthpiece for the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Were the erstwhile AWW guests allowed to keep the airfares bought for them by AWW? Were those flights funded by taxpayers? Who knows. What is known is that Louise Adler, the firebrand organiser who blew up the AWW, is not only attending the guerrilla festival — she is hosting a conversation with the main attraction, the equally combustible RAF.

RAF’s star power is not explained by her books, whose blurbs read like Islamic chick lit: Amal Abdel-Hakim worries whether her head looks big in a hijab, while Esma, who watches ABC News, has the Guardian saved as an app on her iPhone, and is on the hunt for Mr Right — ‘who must be a Muslim’.

The notoriety of RAF rests largely on what she writes on social media. She posted an image of a Hamas paraglider the day after the 7 October massacre and left it up for at least five months. She has described feeling ‘exhilarated’ the day after the slaughter, and said her family felt ‘pride’. She refused to condemn Hamas as terrorists in one interview, calling the massacre ‘resistance’. Her posts are littered with monstrous lies, such as: ‘Israeli Zionist demons are murdering, torturing and raping with zero restraint, hourly, daily… Congratulations to the people of the Holocaust committing a Holocaust.’

Amidst these, in 2024, she infamously posted: ‘If you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety.’ The threat implied in that post to Australians who support Israel’s right to exist took on a chilling resonance after 14 December 2025.

According to NSW Police, the alleged mass murderers accused of killing 15 people at a Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach and injuring at least 40 others recorded a video before the attack. In a brief of evidence released by the Local Court of New South Wales, police stated that the pair sat in front of an Islamic State flag with four long-armed firearms, recited a passage from the Koran, and condemned the acts of ‘Zionists’ as their motivation for the massacre.

None of this matters to RAF’s fans. Her event in Adelaide has sold out. She will also appear at the Newcastle and Sydney Writers’ Festivals.

As for freedom of speech, her lawyer Michael Bradley said this week that ‘Dr Abdel-Fattah would not consider appearing on a panel alongside a Zionist’ because she is a ‘brown Muslim woman’, quoting Robert Jones Jr.: ‘We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.’

It is yet another inversion of reality. Israel is home to two million Israeli Arabs who enjoy equal rights, are represented in the Knesset and serve on the Supreme Court. It is the Palestinians who refuse to live with Jews; it is Hamas that denies their humanity and right to exist.

The one great discovery of the guerrilla festival is that leftist talkfests can apparently fund themselves.

No one expects the Albanese government to do anything about it, but when Angus Taylor is looking for savings in his budget-in-reply speech, axing these toxic echo chambers would be a welcome announcement.