Month: February 2015

Responding to the ‘Challenging Double Standards’ anti-boycott call

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A week before we launched the artists’ pledge, Artleaks published a call by a group calling themselves Challenging Double Standards (CDS), arguing against what they term ‘the Boycott of Israeli Art and Society.’ You can read their call here. Subsequent to our launch, some of the UK arts press linked to the CDS call in their coverage of the artists’ pledge. APUK felt it necessary to publish a response – together with Israeli citizens for BDS – which Artleaks agreed to post on their website. You can also read it in full below:

On 13th February, Artists for Palestine UK launched the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine, which now has more than 1,000 signatories. In its first week, the website received over 160,000 hits; it seems fair to say that its launch has opened another phase in the debate about the response that cultural workers can make to the struggle of Palestinians against oppression.

Another contribution to these arguments – strongly opposed to ours – has been made by a group of cultural workers based mainly in Germany. Published in ArtLeaks a few days before we launched the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine, it comprises a call against boycott, made under the heading ‘Challenging Double Standards.’In the interests of debate, we offer a summary of what we take to be the authors’ main propositions, followed by a defence of our own approach and a critique of theirs.

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The response from Israel: ‘cheap propaganda’ & hate-filled satire

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The antisemitism smear was the anticipated response of Israel’s apologists to the artists’ pledge for human rights. Indeed that is what makes signatories courageous individuals. What was feared but less anticipated was the extent to which that smear would be sharpened – and then given a platform in the mainstream press – to hold pledge signatories responsible for the deadly targeting of Jews.

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Palestinian artists speak: boycott directed against apartheid system of occupation & discrimination

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My name is Abdelfattah Abusrour. I am director of Alrowwad cultural and theatre training society, which I founded with a group of friends in 1998 in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine, where I was born, to create a safe space of beautiful expression, a philosophy that I call beautiful resistance against the ugliness of occupation and its violence… and to help our children and youth to see their potential as change makers, without needing to carry a gun and shoot everybody else…

In May 2002, Alrowwad theatre centre was vandalised by the Israeli army. They broke our video cameras and computers, and emptied oil and acrylic painting tubes all over the space. During our tours in the West Bank, many checkpoints forbid us passage with our theatre or dance shows and our play bus. We wait for hours, sometimes without being allowed to pass south to Hebron or to the north. No access is granted to Gaza, to East Jerusalem or 1948 Palestine.

Theatre and arts are about giving a voice to those who are not heard, and defending what we believe is just and right… That is why for me as an artist, as a theatre practitioner, I boycott every relation with Israeli artists or academics or politicians… Continue reading →

Threats by pro-Israel advocates are nothing new in the art world

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As can be seen on our page, Resisting Bullying and Censorship, artists and arts organisations in the UK have been subjected to all forms of pressure and threats in an attempt to get them to conform to a pro-Israel agenda – the result frequently being censorship of important cultural works.

Below is a flavour of the tone of attack experienced by artists; perhaps in this particular case the author does not have the influence he boasts of, and is simply peddling antisemitic tropes. We hope so. Risible though the email we received may appear, similar threats from well-placed individuals and groups are a matter of serious concern to independent arts organisations, as we saw in the case of the Tricycle Theatre.

Email received by Artists for Palestine from Claude Gubbay, 20 February:
Dear Sir,

I am a contemporary Art collector and when I was [he means ‘saw’] what 100 [it is now 1000] irresponsible artist where doing and boycotting Israel with NO UNDERSTANDING of what is going on in either Palestine or Israel it saddened me greatly. I have decided to boycott purchasing any of the listed Artists and I will use all my influence to stop anyone purchasing works by these artists.

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Is this the Guardian’s notion of balance?

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In the week following the publication of our letter announcing the launch of the artists’ pledge, the Guardian published several responses – on the letters page, and in Comment is Free (CiF). Of nine published letters, three were supportive. Our riposte (below) went unpublished. Novelist Kamila Shamsie’s piece on why she signed the pledge was easy to miss: it appeared only in the print edition, under ‘The week in Books’.

Unusually, an Israeli politician was given a slot in both sections of the newspaper. On the same day, a CiF piece appeared entitled ‘Those calling for a boycott of Israel are ignoring some painful truths‘, as well as a letter under the sensationalist and inflammatory headline, ‘Why no petition to protect Jewish people?‘. The author, chairperson of the Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, was even permitted to repeat his hasbara, so that Guardian readers are subjected twice to his derisory hyperbole suggesting an inevitable genocide of Israeli Jews would be on the consciences of the pledge signatories:

As artists – who by definition are people with imagination – are they willing to take a moment and consider what would happen if, following a call in the Guardian, the IDF puts down its weapons and stops protecting the people of Israel for 24 hours? If you don’t share the imagination of an artist let me tell you: radical Islamists would kill us all. Women and children first.

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Theatre director Jonathan Chadwick: BDS crucially important element in resistance

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Jonathan Chadwick – artistic director of Az Theatre, and a Pledge signatory – has written a blog post about his recent trip to the West Bank, which we think is worth sharing:

I went to Palestine on Saturday 7th February and came back on Sunday 15th February. I failed to get into Gaza to pursue the work on War and Peace.

Caryl Churchill and I worked on her recent play, Love and Information, at Ashtar Theatre. The British Council accommodated us. The Royal Court Theatre provided finance for the translation. We paid for the travel and did the work for free. It was our contribution, like planting a play in Palestine! Continue reading →

Kamila Shamsie: Why I signed the artists’ pledge for Palestine

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On Saturday 14 February, a 600 word piece was published in the Guardian Saturday Review by novelist and pledge signatory, Kamila Shamsie, which we reproduce in full here:

Kamila Shamsie 14.02.15It doesn’t take long in the West Bank and Jerusalem to work out that ‘apartheid’ is the only word that will do. It is present in the extensive infrastructure of military might, 3G phone coverage (not allowed to Palestinian mobile providers), and no-Arabs-permitted bus routes that cater to settlers in the West Bank whose presence there is illegal. It is present in the implementation of laws that make it virtually impossible for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to acquire residence permits for their spouses from the West Bank and Gaza. It is present in the security checkpoint in the middle of a once-busy market street in Hebron where Israeli guards inspect your paperwork to make sure you aren’t Palestinian – absolutely everyone else is allowed through. It is present, most starkly, in the Separation Wall. Continue reading →

Guardian: Our cultural boycott of Israel starts now

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Guardian letters
Friday 13 February

Along with more than 600 other fellow artists, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government. Since the summer war on Gaza, Palestinians have enjoyed no respite from Israel’s unrelenting attack on their land, their livelihood, their right to political existence. “2014,” says the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, was “one of the cruellest and deadliest in the history of the occupation.” The Palestinian catastrophe goes on. Israel’s wars are fought on the cultural front too. Its army targets Palestinian cultural institutions for attack, and prevents the free movement of cultural workers. Its own theatre companies perform to settler audiences on the West Bank – and those same companies tour the globe as cultural diplomats, in support of “Brand Israel”. During South African apartheid, musicians announced they weren’t going to “play Sun City”. Now we are saying, in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ashkelon or Ariel, we won’t play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops, until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians.

To see the full list of supporters, go to artistsforpalestine.org.uk. Khalid Abdalla, Riz Ahmed, Peter Ahrends, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Will Alsop, Richard Ashcroft, John Berger, Bidisha, Nicholas Blincoe, Leah Borrromeo, Haim Bresheeth, Victoria Brittain, Niall Buggy, Tam Dean Burn, Jonathan Burrows, David Calder, Anna Carteret, Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, Ian Christie, Caryl Churchill, Sacha Craddock, Liam Cunningham, Selma Dabbagh, Colin Darke, April De Angelis, Andy de la Tour, Ivor Dembina, Shane Dempsey, Elaine Di Campo, Patrick Driver, Earl Okin, Sally El Hosaini, Brian Eno, Gareth Evans, Annie Firbank, James Floyd, Aminatta Forna, Jane Frere, Kadija George, Bob Giles, Mel Gooding, Tony Graham, Omar Robert Hamilton, Jeremy Hardy, Mike Hodges, James Holcombe, Rachel Holmes, Adrian Hornsby, Rose Issa, Ann Jungman, John Keane, Brigid Keenan, Hannah Khalil, Shahid Khan, Peter Kosminsky, Hari Kunzru, Paul Laverty, Alisa Lebow, Mike Leigh, Tom Leonard, sonja Linden, Phyllida Lloyd, Ken Loach, Liz Lochhead, David Mabb, Sabrina Mahfouz, Miriam Margolyes, Kika Markham, Simon McBurney, Sarah McDade, Jimmy McGovern, Pauline Melville, Roger Michell, China Mieville, Russell Mills, Laura Mulvey, Jonathan Munby, Courttia Newland, Lizzie Nunnery, Rebecca O’Brien, Treasa O’Brien, Andrew O’Hagan, Jeremy Page, Timothy Pottier, Michael Radford, Maha Rahwanji, Ravinder Randhawa, Siobhan Redmond, Lynne Reid Banks, Ian Rickson, Leon Rosselson, Kareem Samara, Leila Sansour, Alexei Sayle, Seni Seneviratne, Kamila Shamsie, Anna Sherbany, Eyal Sivan, Gillian Slovo, John Smith, Max Stafford-Clark, Maggie Steed, Sarah Streatfeild, Mitra Tabrizian, Mark Thomas, Cat Villiers, Roger Waters, Esther Wilson, Penny Woolcock, Susan Wooldridge, Emily Young, Andrea Luka Zimmerman

UK theatre director blogs his trip to Palestine

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Jonathan Chadwick is artistic director of Az Theatre:

The aim was to visit my colleagues in Gaza in order to pursue our project to create an original new Arabic stage adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in Gaza. Now it looks quite unlikely that I will get permission from the Israelis. But I will still be going to the West Bank.

… Theatre for Everybody in Gaza have produced a good Arabic translation of a stage adaptation that was produced in the 1950 in Germany. We have presented two events as benefits to finance the work. Both events were at Rich Mix. One in September and the other in January. At both these events there were readings of stage adaptations of Tolstoy’s works and skype conversations with our colleagues in Gaza.

The work in Gaza has been held up by the recent ‘war’ and the subsequent ‘peace’. The situation there is dreadful. We thought that if I visited Gaza and worked with Theatre for Everybody it would get things moving and it would help to break down the isolation they feel.

He will be joined by playwright Caryl Churchill: Continue reading →