Ken Loach has nothing to apologise for
As UK band Radiohead prepares to perform in Israel on July 19 in direct breach of the Palestinian boycott, leading boycott supporter Ken Loach has faced defamatory attacks on his integrity.
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Thom Yorke’s words about art ‘crossing borders’ ring hollow in Israel-Palestine
Thom Yorke makes a statement justifying Radiohead’s forthcoming appearance in Israel – but once again fails to make any mention of the Palestinians who suffer under Israel’s regime.
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Artswatch Palestine: April-May 2017
Artswatch Palestine: April-May 2017.
* Pinkwashing rejected
* The trial of Dareen Tatour
* The detention of Abu Sakha
* The banning of International Women’s Day
* A war of aggression on Amazon
* Ten years of PalFest
* On the red carpet in Gaza
* Regev’s dress at Cannes -
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke ‘offended’ by appeal from fellow artists: our response
Radiohead’s concert is itself a political statement, and a deeply divisive one. It’s telling the Israeli public they really don’t need to bother their heads with the Occupation and the boring old story of Palestinian suffering.
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Save the First Drama School in Palestine from Closure
Ashtar is faced with financial crisis. The theatre needs to raise £40,000 to keep its premises open.
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AN OPEN LETTER TO RADIOHEAD
OPEN LETTER TO RADIOHEAD: “Do what artists did in South Africa’s era of oppression – stay away until apartheid is over.”
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Artswatch Palestine: February-March 2017
ARTWATCH DIGEST: FEBRUARY – MARCH 2017
* Raiding Jenin
* Raiding Aida
* Shutting down a Theatre
* Controlling the film industry
* Putting poetry on trial
* Making Music -
Banksy Withdraws Invitation to Fatboy Slim to Perform at Walled Off Hotel
Banksy, artist turned hotelier, has responded to an appeal from Palestinians, and withdrawn an invitation to English DJ Fatboy Slim to perform at a street party outside the new Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem.
Fatboy Slim scheduled a Bethlehem appearance the day after his planned March 12 performance in Tel Aviv. Artists for Palestine UK (APUK), have appealed to the DJ to cancel his Israeli show.
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‘No one now regrets boycotting apartheid South Africa’
UPDATE 09.03.2017 From Israeli Citizens: Radiohead, Please Don’t Play Tel-Aviv Open letter from Israeli citizens to Radiohead : “We urge you to cancel your performances in Israel and not grant your seal of approval to Israel’s ongoing crimes and human rights violations.” 09.03.2017 London, 7 March 2017 Calls mount for Radiohead to cancel Israel gig Artists for Palestine…
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‘Dear Rabbi Sacks – stop your lies about BDS’
Robert Cohen addresses Rabbi Sack’s animated propaganda video designed to undermine support for the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
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Immediate Threat to Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech
These are outrageous interferences with free expression, and are direct attacks on academic freedom. As academics with positions at UK universities, we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years. It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel, under the thin disguise of concern about antisemitism.
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Artists to Fatboy Slim: please don’t play Tel Aviv
Artists write to DJ Fatboy Slim asking him to cancel his forthcoming show in Tel Aviv. Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim, said recently in an interview that his criteria for accepting a gig means it has to ‘fulfil the 5 f’s’ – a first, a favour for a friend, fun, finance, food. Playing the settler-colonial state may be ‘a first’ for Fatboy, but it’s only going to be ‘fun’ if he ignores the experience of Palestinians including those within Israel’s borders. We hope he thinks again.
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ARTSWATCH December 2016 – January 2017
Regev Watch Miri Regev, Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sport, has commented , 27th December, on the change of presidency in the United States: ‘Obama is history,’ said Regev. ‘We have Trump.’ Christian Viveros-Fauné, writing in Artnet, suggests that ‘like Trump, the Likud politician consistently engages in a brazen, counter-factual brand of right-wing populism’. Viveros-Fauné charts the growing scope…
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Call for support for ‘Ambulance’ director Mohamed Jabaly
ARTISTS FOR PALESTINE UK STATEMENT The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) and the Norwegian Immigration Tribunal have refused to grant Palestinian film-maker Mohamed Jabaly a work visa to allow him to tour with his first film, Ambulance (2016), and to make a second film with his Norwegian producers, in Tromsø, Norway. Artists for Palestine UK (APUK)…
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Mohammad Abu Sakha: in prison for making children happy
One year after he was arrested by Israeli forces, Palestinian circus teacher Mohammad Abu Sakha (pictured,on left) is still behind bars, and without charges.
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One Hundred Years and Counting: Britain, Balfour, and the Cultural Repression of Palestinians
This report looks at the repression of Palestinian cultural expression by Israel and collusion and censorship here in the UK by British government ministers. It traces this relationship back to the wording of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The briefing offers an essential perspective for understanding Israel’s attempts to erase the Palestinian past and future, and proposes practical steps groups such as ours can take here in the UK to end the silencing of Palestinian voices and perspectives.
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ARTSWATCH November 2016
The dangers of satire A blog by ‘John Brown’ in +972 magazine (27thNovember) reports on recent experiences of the Bedouin blogger Anas Abudaabes. The wild fires that swept through Northern Israel in mid-November provoked some Facebook posters in neighbouring countries into words of celebration. Abudaabes responded satirically, writing that the way to earn the respect of posters like these…
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Artists appeal to the Chemical Brothers: Please don’t play Tel Aviv
‘…The Chemical Brothers move around the world in complete freedom, but the price of the settlers’ ‘sense of security’ in occupied territory is enormous for Palestinian artists and their communities. Their freedom of movement is stymied at every turn – vast military checkpoints; roads to towns and villages deliberately blocked; land stolen in the name of ‘security’; and so on.’
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ARTSWATCH October 2016
‘The National Puppet Theatre of Israel’ Habima, Israel’s National Theatre, has announced that in mid-November it will put on a show in Kiryat Arba. Kiryat Arba is a settlement in territory illegally occupied by Israel, and a place which, in the words of an editorial in Ha’aretz (26th October), ‘has become a symbol of the injustices of the…
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Artists as ‘ambassadors’ for NGOs: on what terms?
Dear Oxfam,
We’ve been reflecting on Oxfam’s unwillingness to take any kind of stand against Baaba Maal’s imminent performance in occupied East Jerusalem. Your last letter to Artists for Palestine UK said, ‘Oxfam’s policy does not extend to supporting a boycott of Israel’. But this is to misunderstand the meaning of Baaba Maal’s action and its very real challenge to Oxfam policy. Oxfam is behaving inconsistently with respect to Israeli violations of international law.
