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.”

Palestinian solidarity groups across Australia, including in Adelaide, are holding a national day of commemoration for the Nakba on Saturday 13 May 2023 to mark 75 years since the Nakba of 1948. See Adelaide remembrance events.

Palestinians around the world mark the ‘Nakba’, or ‘Catastrophe’, referring to the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948, resulting in the loss of the Palestinian homeland, with 80% of Palestinians made refugees and 20% displaced.

Dr Yara Hawari, Al Shabaka's Palestine policy fellow and AFOPA's 2022 Edward Said Memorial Lecture speaker, sums up Israelis' recent democracy protests perfectly:
     
" The Israeli democratic state is and always has been a myth, an illusion built to sustain the oppression of the Palestinian people and continue their dispossession."

Five final year International Studies students from the University of Adelaide - two of whom are also studying Law – undertook internships with the Australian Friends of Palestine Association. Their task was to prepare a five-part report analysing the US-based Human Rights Watch 2021 report entitled “A Threshold Crossed”, in which HRW, for the first time in its history, deemed Israel an “apartheid state”. The project expanded focus, to take in consideration of the HRW and a recent Amnesty International report, and to include references to other organisations that had reached and reported their conclusion that Israel was an apartheid state.

AFOPA’s Patron, Paul Heywood-Smith, writes a response and challenge to the editorial in The Australian newspaper of 21 October 2022