PwC Australia pulls logo from Adelaide Writers’ Week

A major accounting firm has pulled its logo from the Adelaide Festival event’s promotional material amid controversy over two guests booked to appear.

Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American writer, visits the Al Aqsa mosque at 2014 Palestine Festival of Literature in Jerusalem, Israel. Picture: Rob Stothard/Getty Images

Accounting firm PwC Australia is the latest company to withdraw its support for Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week over the event’s inclusion of two authors criticised over anti-Israel commentary and backing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on social media.

PwC’s logo has been removed from the Festival’s website, and follows similar action by fellow event sponsors, national law firm MinterEllison and tech firm Capgemini.

Adelaide Festival Writers Week 2023. Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa. Picture: Chase Burkett

Adelaide Festival Writers Week 2023. Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd. Picture: Supplied by Adelaide Festival

While continuing to support the broader Festival, The Advertiser has also withdrawn its staff from the Breakfast With Papers program in response to the comments made by Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd and Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa.

“PwC did not directly fund Adelaide Festival, their support is the provision of pro-bono auditing services for our charitable Foundation,” Festival chief executive Kath Mainland said.

PwC said on Wednesday that it would continue its in-kind support of the Festival, which is limited to that annual audit.

It issued a statement to staff on Tuesday condemning comments made by El-Kurd and Abulhawa.

“We condemn in the strongest terms any anti-Semitic comments and any suggestion of support for Russia’s war against Ukraine. We stand with the Jewish and Ukrainian communities who have been understandably hurt by this issue,” the PwC Australia statement read.

Two respected Ukrainian authors, poet and novelist Kateryna Babkina and historian Olesya Khromeychuk, have also withdrawn from a streamed Writers’ Week discussion in protest over the attendance of Abulhawa.

Abulhawa has as openly defended Russian president Vladimir Putin and called Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a “depraved Zionist with a house on stolen Palestinian land” and a “clown who is trying to ignite World War III”.

El-Kurd has described Zionists on Twitter as being “sadistic” for setting fires in Palestine, and accused Zionists of having “an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood and land”.

He has likened Israel to the Nazi regime whose genocide led to the creation of the Jewish state. His tweets have been denounced as anti-Semitic by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.