What The Hell America!

To understand why Chandler and the Australian are targeting Sabsabi, it’s necessary to contextualize the two artworks at the center of the controversy, Thank you very much (2006) and You (2007). 

Chandler’s surface-level commentary on Thank you very much — which juxtaposes a clip of George W. Bush saying “Thank you very much” with footage of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden — interprets the work as portraying Bush as thanking al-Qaeda for the attack on the World Trade Center. But this reading overlooks the complexity of the piece, failing to notice the contrast Sabsabi highlights between media portrayals of 9/11 and the retaliatory violence that Bush unleashed during the “war on terror.” As the text accompanying Sabsabi’s artwork at a 2022 exhibition explained, these “early video works reflect and engage with ideas that consider the way in which society interacts with notions of conflict, contested histories and the role the individual plays within this gambit.”

A more honest interpretation of Thank you very much is that it invites the audience to question how US politicians leveraged media representations of 9/11, including Islamophobic hysteria, as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. This reading reframes the artwork as a critique of the violence unleashed by 9/11 and as a commentary on the role of US foreign policy in creating the conditions that gave rise to groups like al-Qaeda.

Importantly, Sabsabi hasn’t provided an official explanation of Thank you very much. As art critics Rex Butler and Paris Lettau wrote in Memo Review, Sabsabi’s tone is ambivalent and ironic because “Thank you very much is not a simple piece of propaganda.”

Sabsabi’s dual-channel video You (2007) also invites audiences to develop their own critique of Western media while portraying the futility of imperialist violence in the Middle East. In You, Sabsabi reproduces Nasrallah’s victory speech, given after the defeat of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon. The work projects a looping mosaic of the speech onto “You” (the audience), alongside a sound installation. Far from glorifying Nasrallah, You explores the representation of Islamic leaders in the Western media. On one interpretation, the work highlights how Israel papered over its failed invasion of Lebanon by wrongly portraying Hezbollah as the invading army.

It is fitting then that Penny Wong disavowed You — an artwork she had never seen — after Chandler claimed it “features the dead Hezbollah terrorist leader Nasrallah.” Rather than probing the context of Sabsabi’s work, Wong took Chandler at her word, accepting her view that Sabsabi’s representation of Nasrallah was “glorifying the Hezbollah leader.” That is, Wong echoed the same ideological binary between good and evil that Sabsabi invites his audience to question.

The critical lens Sabsabi develops through his practice explains why Creative Australia selected him for the 2026 Biennale. But it doesn’t explain the board’s backflip. What does is the larger campaign of censorship targeting public media, academic, and arts institutions — a campaign that Chandler has played her part in leading.

The campaign against Sabsabi follows a familiar playbook — a playbook that supporters of Israel have perfected to censor pro-Palestinian artists, academics, and journalists. The cornerstone of this strategy is a disingenuous definition of antisemitism that conflates criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. The Murdoch press, and especially the Australian, has given this equivocation political heft, entrenching the falsehood that anti-Palestinian censorship is a form of anti-racism. According to progressive activists at the Jewish Council of Australia, this strategy has “a chilling effect on legitimate criticism of Israel,” especially at public media, research, and art institutions.

For example, staff at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) argue that executives at the public broadcaster have a pro-Israel bias, skewing coverage “in favor of the Israeli narrative over objective reporting.” Those allegations have triggered resignations at the ABC and a successful motion of no confidence by union members from the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) against managing director David Anderson. As the motion stated, “Leaders have consistently failed to protect our ABC’s independence or protect staff when they are attacked.”

An ongoing unfair dismissal case between the ABC and former journalist Antoinette Lattouf shows that MEAA members are right to be concerned. In December 2023, Anderson fired Lattouf for sharing a Human Rights Watch post criticizing Israel for using starvation as “a weapon of war.”

Anderson says that Lattouff’s pro-Palestine stance on social media “added up to antisemitism.” However, leaked messages from a WhatsApp group suggest that the ABC sacked the journalists in part to appease pro-Israel lobbyists. A series of emails between Anderson and ABC Chair Ita Buttrose show that the WhatsApp group bombarded the organization with complaints calling Lattouf an antisemite. By his own admission, Anderson agreed and fired her.

Right-wing lobbyists have also made disingenuous accusations of antisemitism against students and staff at Australian universities. For example, Sydney University has cracked down on protests, including pro-Palestine student encampments. And last week, in a blatant attempt to curtail academic freedom, thirty-nine universities adopted a right-wing definition of antisemitism equating “calls for the elimination of the State of Israel” — that is, arguing for a single state with equal democratic rights for all people — with hatred of Jews. The change drastically limits the scope of political and academic freedom at public universities, exposing peaceful protesters to unfair punishment.

Conservatives have also targeted individual anti-racist researchers. For example, on February 27, the Australian Research Council (ARC), the government’s main research-funding agency, suspended an $870,000 grant to Macquarie University academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. Once again, that decision followed allegations published in the Australian characterizing her criticism of Israel as antisemitism. As an open letter from independent journal Overland points out, the move against Abdel-Fattah’s research into Arab/Muslim Australian social movements is “a blatant attempt to silence academic critics of Israel” under the guise of anti-racism.

There are striking commonalities between the personal experiences of Lattouf, Abdel-Fattah, and Sabsabi. In each case, right-wing Zionists pilloried a prominent Arab Australian with disingenuous accusations of antisemitism. And in each case, public institutions — institutions responsible for upholding and promoting freedom of expression in their respective fields — capitulated entirely to political pressure. Together they point to a concerning rise in censorship targeting pro-Palestine figures, censorship that has also persecuted Jewish Australian critics of Israel.

While many influential people in the art world have thrown their support behind Sabsabi and Dagostino, few have acknowledged that Creative Australia’s backflip is anti-Palestinian censorship. That silence is deafening considering arts institutions have spent years celebrating his works exploring the politics of race, cultural difference, and religion. Despite their supposed commitment to political freedom and anti-racism, it indicates an unwillingness to challenge the Israel lobbyists vilifying Sabsabi.

Sadly, that institutional silence predates Sabsabi’s dismissal. In January 2024, over one thousand members of Artists for Palestine wrote and delivered a petition to twelve major Australian cultural institutions, asking them to support a permanent cease-fire and to call for an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. So far, only six of the twelve institutions have acknowledged the petition — and none of them have publicly opposed Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Indeed, the National Gallery of Australia is censoring artworks with Palestinian flags, including Te Paepae Aora’i – Where the Gods Cannot Be Fooled by indigenous art collective SaVĀge K’lub.

The hypocrisy of Australian art institutions is especially jarring given the success of Archie Moore and Ellie Buttrose — the first Australians to win the prestigious Golden Lion award — at the 2024 Biennale. Moore’s sprawling installation, kith and kin, filled the walls of the Australian Pavilion with a vast map of indigenous kinship networks that he set against towering stacks of reports into indigenous deaths in police and prison custody.

Given the success of Moore’s critique of colonization and genocide, you might have expected Creative Australia to defend Sabsabi, an artist it once lauded for probing “identity politics and ideology.” But this was not the case. Instead, the board capitulated to bad-faith charges of antisemitism, presumably because that seemed to be the path of least resistance.

However, on February 14, the board’s decision backfired when the remaining artists short-listed for Australia’s Biennale Pavilion called for Sabsabi’s reinstatement alongside Moore and Buttrose. Senior Creative Australia staff and Biennale ambassador Simon Mordant also resigned in protest. Four thousand people have since endorsed an open letter from independent magazine Memo Review accusing the board of “artistic censorship.”

And to make matters worse, Adrian Collette has now conceded that a boycott in solidarity with Sabsabi may leave Australia’s Biennale Pavilion empty. With no short list of artists and with trust in the organization shattered, a slogan has been circulating on social media: “Khaled Sabsabi or an empty pavilion.”

The pavilion is now a picket line. Meanwhile, Sabsabi has promised to show his Biennale work despite the board’s decision.

Ironically, the spectacle of Sabsabi’s dismissal is a case study in how political power and news media distorts images, the very ideological mechanisms his work criticizes. And the censorship of pro-Palestinian artists, journalists, and academics has so far failed to paint over Israel’s contempt for human rights. Instead, it’s highlighted that the genocide in Gaza pivots ideologically on what Overland calls “the weaponization of anti-racist discourse in the service of political repression.”