Festival dumping calculated, says Palestinian author

Palestinian-Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah says her cancellation by a major national festival was calculated to link her to the Bondi massacre.

Three Adelaide Festival board members and chair Tracey Whiting quit over the weekend and dozens of authors have withdrawn from Writers' Week, which starts on February 28.

The mass boycott followed the board's announcement last Thursday that "national grief" and "community tensions" triggered by the Bondi shooting on December 14 had prompted its decision to remove the Palestinian-Australian writer from its program.

The decision was made public on the same day a royal commission into anti-Semitism and social cohesion was announced.

The board referred to "past statements" by the author in announcing its decision, and conservative Jewish groups have highlighted Dr Abdel-Fattah's sharing of posts critical of Israel on social media.

Dr Abdel-Fattah told AAP it was "clear that attempts to police speech ... will be met with a strong response from the writing and creative community".

"It is hard to view the timing as accidental rather than a calculated decision to make the announcement on that particular day and to reinforce the link between me and the Bondi atrocity," she said on Monday.

"No amount of retrospective back-pedalling about vague 'prior statements' can obscure the fact that I was formally disinvited on the grounds that my Palestinian identity would act as an emotional provocation.

"(It was) a frightening foreshadowing of what is attempted to be normalised post-Bondi."

Readers and Writers Against the Genocide said the future of the festival was "dubious" and up to 4pm on Monday, they had documented 114 people withdrawing from the writers week event.

They include former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, author Trent Dalton, journalists John Lyons, Sarah Ferguson, Louise Milligan and Amy Remeikis and international guests Zadie Smith and Yanis Varoufakis.

Marque Lawyers managing partner Michael Bradley, who represents Dr Abdel-Fattah, told AAP the "moral indefensibility of the Adelaide Festival board's actions has been amply evidenced by the reaction it's provoked".

"It also trampled on Randa's human rights and the board will have to answer for that," he said.

In a letter to Ms Whiting on Sunday, Mr Bradley asked the board to "identify with specificity each of the past statements made by her on which the board relied in making its decision".

"Please ensure that your organisation and each individual member of the board retains all documents in their possession ? that relate to the decision to exclude Dr Abdel-Fattah," he wrote.

"You are each now on notice that these documents may be required for the purpose of litigation."

Announcing her decision to resign on Sunday, Ms Whiting said "recent decisions were bound by certain undertakings and my resignation enables the Adelaide Festival, as an organisation, to refresh its leadership and its approach to these circumstances".

Three board members - journalist Daniela Ritorto, businesswoman Donny Walford and lawyer Nick Linke - also quit at an extraordinary board meeting on Saturday.

The board has made no public comment since announcing Dr Abdel-Fattah's cancellation and comments on Facebook pages for the festival and writers week were disabled over the weekend.

Adelaide Festival Corporation executive director Julian Hobba said in a statement the festival was "navigating a complex and unprecedented moment".

Former Adelaide Writers' Week director Jo Dyer told Radio National Ms Whiting's decision to quit was unsurprising.

"She has ? overseen a decision which has trashed the international standing of what is one of the most beloved organisations in Adelaide," she said.

Only three voting members remained and the board no longer had a quorum, Ms Dyer said.

While prevented by law from directing the board, Premier Peter Malinauskas indicated he did not support Dr Abdel-Fattah remaining on the lineup, a position echoed by federal cabinet minister Madeleine King.

"When asked for my opinion, I was happy to make it clear that the state government did not support the inclusion of Dr Abdel-Fattah on the Adelaide Writers' Week program," Mr Malinauskas said.

The premier had been "criminally negligent in the way that he has approached Writers' Week," Ms Dyer said.

"He had brought really unbearable pressure on the board to rescind the invitation to Dr Abdel-Fattah in a way which is completely inappropriate for him to do," she said.