It was a balmy afternoon at Adelaide Writers’ Week and hundreds of us were sitting in the sun under the trees, listening to the writers. And then journalist John Lyons plunged us into a different world.

“By the time this session ends,” he said, “three or four Palestinian children will have been killed. Five bombs will have been dropped by the Israelis.” Imagine this garden as a square kilometre in Gaza, he said. Since the start of the latest conflict it would have been hit by 79 bombs.

The six days of last week’s literature festival were filled with writers exploring all kinds of topics, from ancient Rome to the impact of AI on authors. And yet you couldn’t get away from Gaza. Lyons thanked Writers’ Week director Louise Adler for resisting pressure to cancel such discussions.

The mood was peaceful, respectful and overwhelmingly pro-Palestine. There were a few proud wearers of the keffiyeh scarf, both onstage and in the audience. One was Miles Franklin winner and First Nations novelist Melissa Lucashenko, who said her daughter-in-law had family at grave risk of being killed. She finished her session with the words, “Free Palestine.”

There were rumours about moving pro-Palestine activist Clementine Ford’s session to a different venue because of fears for safety, but she took to the stage as planned, draped in her keffiyeh. She was there to talk about her anti-marriage book, I Don’t, “but I can’t do anything at these events without acknowledging we are watching something devastating”, she said. “Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. If you can’t fight at least for women and children, I think you need to reassess your values.”

Poet Omar Sakr, who has had his writing bootcamp at the State Library of Victoria cancelled because of concerns for “child and cultural safety”, said that every day for the past four months, he’d seen Arab children die, “and each time I see my son”.

Large crowds turned up for events featuring writers who know about the Israel-Palestine conflict at first hand. The star turn was historian Ilan Pappe, described as “the bete noir of Israeli academia”, appearing virtually from his home in Britain. He was expelled from Haifa University for his views, and said that today it was far more dangerous for an Israeli academic to challenge the government.

Political commentator Bruce Wolpe said the only choice was between two states or endless war. But Pappe had no hope of a two-state solution. He said the conflict was the beginning of the end for Israel. The more ruthless and inhumane the attacks in Gaza became, the easier it would be to turn Israel into a pariah state, and a new political reality would fill the void.