More than 180 actors, writers and producers have accused the jury of the 2022 European Drama Prize in Germany of “modern-day McCarthyism”, after it withdrew a Lifetime Achievement Award from renowned British playwright Caryl Churchill over her support for Palestinian rights.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, a trade union-organised ‘celebration of solidarity’, disinvited the pro-Palestinian artist following behind-the-scenes pressure.
Israeli filmmakers and artists including Oscar-nominated director Guy Davidi and Turner Prize co-winner Tai Shani have urged Locarno International Film Festival to cancel its Thursday screening of an Israeli film due to concerns over its funding.
Last week, Artists for Palestine UK revealed that the foundation contractually obligates filmmakers to undertake “that there is not and will not be in the film any presentation, statement or message that calls for … denial of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state [or] marking Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning”.
We have obtained a full copy of the standard contract of the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts’s Israel Cinema Project that filmmakers must sign before receiving funding. Rabinovich’s Cinema Project is Israel’s largest film fund. The Rabinovich Foundation obligates filmmakers to whitewash apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
A service of thanksgiving for journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is to be held at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, London’s ‘journalists’ church’, on June 28th.
More than a hundred artists, including Hollywood stars, acclaimed authors and prominent musicians, call for “meaningful measures to ensure accountability for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and all other Palestinian civilians”
As artists and cultural workers, and as citizens, we strongly affirm our collective commitment to boycott Israeli apartheid until Palestine is free, regardless of government legislation. We are proud to be one of more than 40 organisations which have come together in the Right to Boycott Campaign to oppose the UK government’s ‘anti-boycott bill’.
More than half of the artists participating in British Art Show 9 in Manchester have withdrawn in support of ‘political freedom and artistic expression in cultural institutions and universities across the UK’.
They’re joined by Jim Jarmusch, Peter Capaldi, Harriet Walter, Viggo Mortensen, Maxine Peake, Asif Kapadia and many others.
When those with the public profile of Emma Watson speak out, it becomes all the harder for apartheid’s advocates to whitewash long-standing injustice. We encourage others in a similar position to follow her example: their words will make a difference.
In the city where you are scheduled to play, indigenous Palestinians are subject to constant state violence. The forced expulsion of Palestinian Jerusalemites from their homes is a war crime. In May this year, the Israeli army’s unprovoked incursion into the Al-Aqsa mosque injured over 300 Palestinian worshippers. Together these crimes ignited protests all over Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, only to be swiftly followed by Israeli F16s bombing the Gaza Strip – killing 260 Palestinians, 129 of them civilians including 66 children and 40 women.
Seventy prominent writers, poets and playwrights from several continents, have signed a letter endorsing Sally Rooney’s decision to turn down an offer with an Israel publishing house, describing it as: “an exemplary response to the mounting injustices inflicted on Palestinians”.
More than 100 public figures urge the international community to protect Palestinian human rights defenders.
Musicians Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Jarvis Cocker and Massive Attack, film directors Laura Poitras, Jim Jarmusch and Costa Gravas, authors Philip Pullman, Naomi Klein, Irvine Welsh, Colm Tóibín and Monica Ali — are among dozens of leading artists who have signed a statement urging the international community to act.
The issues exposed by this dangerous precedent could not be more critical, since they hit at the heart of the proper functioning of cultural institutions in a democracy. On the one hand, the principle of independence and curatorial integrity of cultural institutions to operate free from interference from lobby groups or vested interests, and on the other, the right of artists to bear witness, including through expressions of solidarity with marginalised peoples.
Artists for Palestine UK is troubled that the British Actors Network (BAN) has chosen to host an organisation that is funded by the UK government and currently promoted by education secretary, Gavin Williamson, called ‘Solutions Not Sides’. The event is billed as an educational workshop for actors that aims to promote ‘conflict resolution’ as an approach for understanding the situation in Israel-Palestine.
It is as if a dam has burst. The last few days have seen an unprecedented outpouring of solidarity with Palestinians from artists and cultural organisations around the world. Half a century ago, there was massive support for a cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa. Now, artists and cultural workers are mobilising on a similar scale against Israel’s system of apartheid, calling variously for boycotts, practical acts of solidarity with Palestinians and, in particular, an end to co-operation with cultural organisations that are complicit with apartheid.
We share with millions our anger at the indiscriminate and pitiless bombing of the Gaza Strip; at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah; at the armed invasion of the Al-Aqsa compound during the holy month of Ramadan; at the brutal attacks on peaceful protests in the Occupied West Bank, and on Palestinian citizens of Israel in towns within Israel.
As dozens of artists wrote in a statement of support for Ken Loach on Monday: ‘We cannot fight racism by demonising and silencing supporters of Palestinian rights’.
We are deeply troubled to learn of a McCarthyite campaign demanding Oxford University cancel a public event with director Ken Loach discussing his distinguished career in film.
A 2019 parliamentary resolution has had a chilling effect on critics of Israeli policy. Now the cultural sector is speaking up. This article was published in The Guardian under the title ‘Artists like me are being censored in Germany – because we support Palestinian rights’. I am just one of many artists who have been…