Yesterday I posted how Sydney Festival director Olivia Ansell accused activists of “intimidating” artists into boycotting the festival over funding that the event accepted from the Israeli embassy. My post included a denial by one of the boycott organizers, Fahad Ali, who said “It’s a matter of public record that our communications with artists and the Festival board have been consistently respectful.”
Allow the public record to show him to be a blatant liar.
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Australian singer-songwriter Katie Noonan was one of the artists who resisted pressure to boycott the festival, despite nasty online bullying. As she explained in a public Facebook post, she was not contracted by the Sydney Festival, and was not willing to ask her fellow indie artists to turn down paid work during these difficult times. Instead, she stuck to her guns and even signed Creative Community for Peace’s letter rejecting the cultural boycott of Israel:
Katie was relentlessly hounded, and detailed some of the vitriol to which she was subjected at the hands of Israel-haters, which included being called “racist, mysogonist, anti-feminist, POC hating, WOC hating, homophobic, transphobic, Palestinian hating, colonial loving, cis white, pink washing priveliged hetero c**t”:
You can see some of the nastiness to which Katie was subjected here (look from around January 8th). Note it was not confined to unknown haters but also BDS Australia:

One of the things that really rankled some haters picked up on was this comment by Katie, which indicates she gets it when it comes to Israel:

Clearly, all of this bullying understandably got to Katie, as indicated by some subsequent posts:
But to her credit, she stuck to her guns, and has even given the proverbial middle finger to the bullying haters:
Katie is just one example of those bullied for having a mind of her own, not to mention a moral compass. I will hopefully be drawing attention to other examples further exposing the nasty haters for what they are.
In the meantime, thank you Katie for being awesome. We’ve got your back!