Yesterday, I was about to bring you examples of Mohammed El-Kurd’s vile words at the Adelaide Festival, which came as no surprise given his history of lying and antisemitism. I was able to do so because his session was live streamed and uploaded. I was not able to bring you examples of what his antisemitic partner-in-crime Susan Abulhawa said, because her session was strangely not uploaded.
But thanks to Sky News host Sharri Markson, who spoke about the antisemitism on display at the festival, we have audio of some of her remarks. And it would be fair to say she was no less disgusting than El-Kurd.
In the audio below, she repeats the blood libel that Israeli Jews poison the wells of palestinian Arabs. After an audience member (who sounds Israeli) seems to take exception with this or something else she said, the audience boos, and Abulhawa pretends to be conciliatory (receiving applause in the process).
The accusation that Jews poison the water of non-Jews goes back to Medieval times, when Jews throughout Europe were accused of having caused the spread of the Black Death by poisoning the wells. The idea that Jews in Israel poison the water of palestinian Arabs was a libel that seems to have been spread by the PLO in 2016. Mahmoud Abbas even repeated it in the EU parliament, and later had to retract it.
Meanwhile, the vile antisemitism was not confined to El-Kurd, Abulhawa, and company. Some in the audience obviously felt “at home” to tell us how they really feel.
Louise Adler, I hope you are proud of yourself. I suspect your parents would be ashamed of you allowing this Jew-hatred to be given a platform.
Updates:
9/3/23 13:55: Reader Ashley writes:
I was at the “poison the wells” session.
The guy that interrupted was actually a Ukrainian – you don’t think Susan would have had empathy like “I know that this was coming from a place of pain” for an Israeli/Zionist/Jew!
At the end of the session she took a moment to clarify what she had said and cleverly tried to a) make sure no-one thought she has sympathy for an Israeli and b) tried to identify common ground with the Ukrainians – I too know what to is like to have bombs rain down on you, and to suffer in pain when someone attacks your homeland…
