Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa has emphatically rejected accusations of being an apologist for Vladimir Putin, but stands by criticisms of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as her views on the situation in her homeland.
In an interview with ABC Radio Adelaide's David Bevan ahead of her appearance at Adelaide Writers' Week, Abulhawa defended her views on the war in Ukraine, saying that she had been falsely represented as a "cheerleader" for the Russian president.
Controversy has surrounded Abulhawa's appearance in recent weeks because of rhetoric she has used on Twitter.
Abulhawa — who is speaking today and again on Thursday — doubled-down on claims that the "United States and NATO are engineering this confrontation".
"It's shocking to me that western media continues to promulgate this kind of 'good versus evil narrative'," she said.
"It's intellectually dishonest and it's dangerous — I mean, we're potentially looking at a nuclear conflict, the ramifications are devastating.
"Australian media has extrapolated my words and made their own interpretation and false claims that I am a cheerleader for Putin who, in my view, has committed horrible crimes and should answer for them, but that does not mean we cannot have a robust and honest discussion about what brought us to this point in Ukraine."
During what at times was a heated discussion, Abulhawa said Mr Zelenskyy had silenced opposition in Ukraine and had prolonged the conflict by backing out of a proposed peace agreement with Russia.
"There was a negotiated agreement that could have ended all of this and Zelenskyy agreed to it and Putin agreed to it but Zelenskyy backed out. It was Zelenskyy who backed out and he did it at the behest of NATO," she told Bevan.
"This information comes to us from Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister because he was involved in that.
"Russia and Putin are responsible for the decisions that they made to invade Ukraine. That does not absolve the decisions Zelenskyy made."
The SA government, opposition and the Association of Ukrainians in South Australia are among those to have condemned Abulhawa's views.
Last week, SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said he had considered pulling funding from Writers' Week because of Abulhawa's comments and said he said would not be attending her talks.
"Susan Abulhawa … has made references to President Zelenskyy having provoked Russia to attack Ukraine which in my view are patently absurd comments that aren't really worthy of too much recognition," he said on Friday.
Abulhawa has also attracted intense criticism over her comments about Israel, prompting concerns from, among others, Adelaide Festival sponsor MinterEllison about the possibility of "racist or anti-Semitic commentary" being given a platform.
In a recent tweet, Abulhawa used the term "human garbage" to refer to 26-year-old Elan Ganeles, who was shot dead as he drove to a wedding in Jerusalem last month.
"We are shattered by the loss of Elan Ganeles, a US-Israeli citizen & IDF [Israeli Defence Force] vet murdered today by Palestinian terrorists," the Consulate General of Israel in New York recently tweeted.
"He volunteered in his local community & sought to better the world. May his memory be a blessing."
According to the Times of Israel, Mr Ganeles was killed by a "Palestinian gunman in the Jordan Valley … as he drove to the wedding".
Asked by David Bevan whether she hated the young man, Abulhawa responded: "I don't love him".
"A US-Israeli citizen killed by a Palestinian while in Israel for a wedding was described by you in a tweet as a 'privileged white man' and 'human garbage' — that sounds like hate speech," Bevan suggested.
When pressed about whether she said "hateful things", Abulhawa rejected the claim that her comments amounted to hate speech.
"Hate speech, racism, requires a power gradient — it flows from people with power to those who are powerless. We are quite literally a colonised, exiled people who live under a brutal military occupation," she said.
"We are powerless and it is shocking, quite frankly, that after 75 years of this we are still being tone-policed."
