Three Ukrainian authors who had been scheduled to appear at Adelaide Writers' Week have withdrawn from the festival amid ongoing controversy over public comments made by another guest on the line-up.
The event's director, Louise Adler, confirmed Kateryna Babkina and Olesya Khromeychuk, who were scheduled to speak at a session on the impact of Russia's invasion on Ukrainian civilians, had decided not to appear.
She said the move was prompted by comments of another guest, Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa, who has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "Nazi-promoting Zionist" and accused him of dragging "the whole world into the inferno of WWIII".
The SA opposition last week called for the cancellation of Abulhawa's attendance — a move rejected by Ms Adler, who today said while she was disappointed by Babkina's and Khromeychuk's decisions, she respected them.
"I'm disappointed those two Ukrainian writers have decided to withdraw because they object to the Twitter feed of one other writer," Ms Adler told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz.
"We talk a lot about safe spaces and I think we'd be better off talking about brave spaces and courageous spaces in which we are respectful in our dialogue with one another but that we can actually tolerate ideas that we disagree with.
"Writers festivals are places for us to gather together to share ideas and discuss ideas that might be upsetting, might be provocative, might be disturbing, but in the context of civil and respectful debate, so I'm really sorry they're not going to be here because I think their voices would have been a valuable contribution."
Ms Adler also said Ukrainian-born Australian-based historian and novelist Maria Tumarkin, who had been scheduled to chair the session in question, had also decided not to attend.
As a result, the event will be without any Ukrainian writers, but organisers have said it will include other voices who are fiercely critical of Russia's invasion of, and military actions in, Ukraine.
Law firm MinterEllison yesterday announced it was reviewing its partnership with the Adelaide Festival because of the scheduled appearances of Abulhawa and Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, who has described Israel as a "terrorist, genocidal nation".
The company said it was concerned about the potential for "racist or anti-Semitic commentary" at the event.
"We have strongly expressed our reservations to the festival," it said in a statement.
"We sought the festival's assurances that no racist or anti-Semitic commentary should be tolerated as part of Mr El-Kurd's or Ms Abulhawa's or any other festival session."
Ms Adler said MinterEllison was not the only firm to withdraw support for the event.
But she said there had since been "offers from a number of other major law firms saying they would like to come in as sponsors".
"We have a policy of zero tolerance of racism. I'm certainly not someone who would support, both personally and professionally — have never supported — propaganda propagating anti-Semitic or racist ideology or politics," she said.
"Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti-Semitism, it is not a form of racism. The elision suits particular interest groups to collapse those two distinctions."
Abulhawa has tweeted about the controversy, praising festival organisers for placing "more value on the integrity of intellectual and cultural public discourse than they do on sponsorship money".
