On Sunday, from Glastonbury’s Other Stage, singer-songwriter Nadine Shah read out a passionate statement against the government’s decision to ban Palestine Action.
Today, in an open letter published below, leading artists including musicians Paul Weller, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, Brian Eno and US artist Reggie Watts have joined Shah in calling for the ban to be dropped and for the government to stop supplying arms to Israel.
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In response to a statement tonight by the Royal Television Society, UK Screen Industry has said:
“We welcome the Royal Television Society’s U-turn in reinstating the Special Award for the courageous Palestinian journalists of Gaza. However, the charity’s statement does little to address or allay our concerns.
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“The RTS now claims the award was simply ‘paused’ due to unspecified ‘potential for controversy’ at its Television Journalism Awards on 5 March – a claim that has never previously been mentioned. It also refers to a ‘previously announced review process’ of which we are entirely unaware.
“It is clear to all that this award must be presented at the RTS Programme Awards on 25 March with the full recognition and honour these journalists deserve. Yet the RTS continues to prevaricate.
Broadcasters Jonathan Dimbleby, Lindsey Hilsum, Sangita Myska, Matt Frei, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Alex Crawford, Fergal Keane and Orla Guerin are among more than 400 TV and journalism professionals who have sent a letter to the leadership of the Royal Television Society (RTS) demanding transparency around its decision-making after the charity abruptly cancelled its Special Award for journalists in Gaza last week.
The letter (copied in full below) “strongly urges” the RTS to reinstate the Special Award at their forthcoming Television Awards ceremony on 25 March.
The program-makers, who include Channel 4’s chief correspondent Alex Thompson, executive producer and former editor of Channel 4 News Ben de Pear, Oscar-winning directors Kevin MacDonald and Asif Kapadia, and RTS- and Emmy-winning director Ramita Navai, say the RTS’ cancellation of the award “reveals a concerning lack of independence, due process and accountability” .
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Following Tuesday’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee session on the BBC axing of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, a move which prompted concerns of racism and censorship from 1000+ programme-makers, Artists for Palestine UK said:
“Rupa Huq asked about the risk of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. We say Tim Davie and Samir Shah are throwing Palestinian children under the bus.
“BBC bosses must explain how they plan to safeguard the children who participated in the film. Their lives are in danger as Israel cuts off aid and threatens to collapse the ceasefire in Gaza. How will Britain’s public broadcaster ensure it isn’t putting a target on innocent kids’ backs?
“We welcome Tim Davie saying an independent review of the BBC’s Middle East coverage is appropriate and urge that this accounts for its abject failure to stand by the Palestinian voices it features. We all know Israeli guests would never be treated this way.”
UK TV and film programme-makers have urged a panel of MPs to press BBC executives on Tuesday over the controversial removal of a documentary about children in Gaza.
The UK Screen Industry group sent a letter (copied below) to members of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Committee on Monday, the day before they grill BBC director-general Tim Davie and chair Dr Samir Shah.
The group urged the lawmakers to ask Davie and Dr Shah to “clarify the specific editorial standards relied upon and the decision-making processes that led” to the axing of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, a move which has prompted concerns of racism and censorship.
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Following Thursday’s BBC board meeting and statement on Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, Artists for Palestine UK said:
“We are appalled that the BBC has chosen to give credence to a politicised campaign that sought to discredit a documentary about children’s experiences of unspeakable Israeli military violence, because one child’s father was deputy agriculture minister in Gaza. This disgraceful decision comes despite nearly 900 media figures having warned the BBC of the dangers of such an approach.
“Reports over the last week have detailed Israel’s detention and torture of hundreds of Gaza’s medical workers. The world has seen images of traumatised and emaciated Palestinian captives emerging from Israeli jails, some with limbs amputated. Rather than adequately reporting on these horrors, the BBC is instead removing a documentary about children in Gaza because of misleading claims about the identity of one child’s parent.”
Gary Lineker, Khalid Abdalla, Anita Rani, and Miriam Margolyes have joined over 1,000 film, TV, and media workers in condemning censorship and racism after the BBC pulled a documentary about children’s lives in Gaza.
The media professionals, including sixteen BBC staff, sent a letter to the broadcaster’s director-general Tim Davie, chair of the board Samir Shah, chief content officer Charlotte Moore, and head of news and current affairs Deborah Turness on Wednesday. The letter (in full below) condemned a “racist” and “dehumanising” campaign targeting the film Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, which the BBC removed from its iPlayer streaming service after pressure from supporters of Israel. The BBC’s board is set to discuss the documentary on Thursday.
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Leading artists, including writer Michael Rosen, actors Billy Howle and Khalid Abdalla, playwrights Caryl Churchill and Tanika Gupta and composer Orlando Gough, have spoken out against attempts to damage the reputation and stifle the work of Brighton’s ThirdSpace theatre company.
ThirdSpace works with young people. Its latest show, Let it be a Tale, is scheduled for performance in venues across the city before Christmas.
‘We all carry our stories with us and pass them down,’ reads the company’s description of the show. ‘When someone dies, we keep their memory alive through stories. When cultures are under threat, we keep them alive through stories.’
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Kingsley Ben-Adir, Khalid Abdalla, Carla Henry, Pooja Ghai and April De Angelis are among 270+ arts and theatre figures who have signed an open letter to Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre condemning the theatre for censoring references to Palestinian and trans liberation in a recently commissioned work.
The letter criticises the cancellation of director Stef O’Driscoll’s updated version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which the signatories say interpreted the play through:
“the lens of contemporary rave culture (…) and the diversity and cultural richness that Manchester is known for”.
Nicola Coughlan, Paapa Essiedu, Maxine Peake and Lolly Adefope are among those expressing dismay that the publicly funded institution would:
“censor a call for Palestinian freedom almost a year into Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza”
The signatories who include playwrights, directors, performers and artists nearly half of whom live or work in Manchester, say efforts to remove references to trans rights is:
“unjustifiable at a time of heightened anti-trans violence and political incitement from UK politicians and parts of the media”.
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Royal Academicians Jock McFadyen, Rana Begum, Vanessa Jackson, Tim Shaw, David Nash, Helen Sear, David Mach and Goshka Macuga are among hundreds of arts professionals condemning the Royal Academy of Arts’ anti-Palestinian censorship after it removed two artworks from its Young Artists’ Summer Show.
In an open letter published today by Artists for Palestine UK, the signatories, including more than 100 Jewish creatives, decry as “shameful” the Royal Academy’s removal of a photograph of a protestor holding a placard that reads, “Jews Say Stop Genocide on Palestinians. Not In Our Name”.
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The boycott of an iconic British arts venue has ended after it apologised for its anti-Palestinian censorship. The Arnolfini in Bristol said it was “truly sorry” for cancelling film and poetry events curated by Bristol Palestine Film Festival in November last year, and committed to platforming Palestinian voices.
In response to the cancellations, more than 1,400 artists – including prominent Bristol artists such as Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, writers Alice Oswald, Nikesh Shukla, Shon Faye, Travis Alabanza and Rachel Holmes – had announced they would refuse to work with the venue in protest at “the censorship of Palestinian culture”. The artists demanded the gallery “commit to freedom of expression, without exception for Palestine” and “genuinely engage with Bristol’s arts community to rectify the harm it has caused”.
Today, in a statement, Arnolfini acknowledged the detrimental impact the cancellations had had, and addressed artists, audiences, and Bristol Palestine Film Festival, saying it was “truly sorry”. The organisation also affirmed its commitment to freedom of expression, saying:
“During this overwhelming humanitarian crisis, the voices of the victims need to be heard. (…) We believe that freedom of expression and intellectual freedom are vital and must be fully reflected in our policies and practices. We are sorry that we did not provide a platform for Palestinian voices at such a crucial time.”
The organisation said it will be publishing new policies and reviewing internal governance processes in light of what had happened.
Bristol Artists for Palestine welcomed Arnolfini’s apology. They said the statement provided a resolution to the artists’ demands, and the group announced an end to the artist-led boycott of the venue.
They went on to say:
“We call for all arts institutions, galleries, venues, festivals, universities and funders to uphold the same consistent freedom of expression with no exception for Palestine that Arnolfini has committed to support, and to formally recognise the devastation being wrought by Israel as plausibly amounting to genocide, as the Arnolfini has done.”
Artists for Palestine UK said:
“We welcome Arnolfini’s statement and applaud the hard work of those involved in the mediation process.
We hope this sends a clear message to other cultural institutions. Amid a repressive political and media climate, cultural institutions are too often failing in their duty to uphold freedom of expression and to protect against discrimination.
At a time of unprecedented dehumanisation of Palestinian people, artists and audiences expect cultural spaces to amplify voices that articulate the realities of Palestinian experiences and aspirations, as vital contributions to cultural understanding and to our shared humanity.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, said:
“We salute the artists, culture workers and human rights defenders in Bristol and beyond who took strategic, principled and persistent action in boycotting Arnolfini until their goals were met.
All British arts organisations and venues should take note that targeted, grassroots mobilisations are a potential consequence of racist anti-Palestinian censorship.”
Last month HOME Manchester announced it would reinstate the event “Voices of Resilience” that it had cancelled in response to pressure from a pro-Israel pressure group, after artists withdrew their work en mass from the gallery.
London’s Barbican Centre has been subject to a mass sit-in, and artists and collectors have withdrawn six art works from the current exhibition, ‘Unravel’, in protest at the cancellation of the London Review of Books lecture series that included a talk by Pankaj Mishra, “The Shoah after Gaza”.
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Over 1000 artists announce refusal to work with Bristol’s Arnolfini after censorship of Palestinian film and poetry
Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, writers Alice Oswald, Nikesh Shukla, Shon Faye, Travis Alabanza and Rachel Holmes are among many of Bristol’s artists who have written a letter accusing the iconic Arnolfini International Centre for Contemporary Arts of “censorship of Palestinian culture”.
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More than 1,300 artists, including Academy Award winning Olivia Colman, Olivier Award winners Harriet Walter and Juliet Stevenson, BAFTA winners Aimee Lou Wood and Siobhán McSweeney, Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You), Susanne Wokoma (Enola Holmes), Youseff Kerkour (Napoleon), Nicola Coughlan (Derry Girls, Bridgerton), Amir El-Masry (The Crown) and Lolly Adefope (Ghosts), have launched a letter addressed to the arts and culture sector, that accuses cultural institutions across Western countries of:
“repressing, silencing and stigmatising Palestinian voices and perspectives”.
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For anyone who cares about their fellow human beings in Gaza, nothing is more important at this moment than to speak out.
Israel and its allies are trying to build a wall of silence around their devastation of Gaza. Around the world, those who seek to break through it are having to contend with an extraordinary and shameful campaign of pressure and threats. No-one who speaks out, from the UN Secretary-General to a London tube-driver, is exempt.
Yet the breakthrough has happened. In every sector of society people horrified by the attack on Gaza are speaking out. The huge demonstrations in the major cities of the world reflect the strength of public feeling.
Among cultural workers, we have seen an outpouring of solidarity, and resistance to attempts to undermine it. Here are just a few examples, from Britain and the US.
1.
Thousands of visual artists and curators signed an open letter published in Artforum magazine that expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people and called for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza. A behind the scenes campaign by a number of powerful art dealers and collectors aimed to pressure individual artists to retract. A week later, the magazine’s owners fired its editor, David Velasco.
“I resent these cowardly bullying and blackmail campaigns to distract everyone in the art world from the central demand of the letter, which was: cease-fire!”
Artists for Palestine UK is shocked at reports that the Barbican told a Palestinian artist to avoid talking about freedom for Palestinians.
Having welcomed a co-founder of Palestinian station Radio Alhara to give a talk on “the radical nature of radio”, the Barbican reportedly instructed him to “safeguard the audience” by keeping his comments about Palestinian freedom to a minimum.
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More than 170 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 comments come in an open letter (published below, in full) whose signatories include Dame Harriet Walter (Killing Eve, Succession), directors Mike Leigh (Peterloo, Mr Turner, Vera Drake), Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Crown), Phyllida Lloyd (The Iron Lady, Mamma Mia!), and the National Theatre’s Dominic Cooke CBE.
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The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, a trade union-organised ‘celebration of solidarity’, disinvited the pro-Palestinian artist following behind-the-scenes pressure.
In a summer punctuated by missile strikes and the targeted killings of Palestinians, Israel’s defenders in the UK continue to respond to critics with defamatory allegations and quasi-legal attempts to silence debate. We have now reached a new low: an artist disinvited by an organisation which has historically prized the right to free expression.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival is a trade union-organised ‘celebration of solidarity’, open to all those prepared to ‘stand up and be counted’ as defenders of workers’ rights. In culture and in political debate, it commemorates the Dorset trade unionists who in 1834 were evicted from their homeland and transported as criminals to Australia.
The disinvitation of rapper and campaigner Lowkey from the 2022 Festival, following behind-the-scenes pressure, is a denial of solidarity where it is badly needed. Lowkey’s music has inspired and energised audiences, igniting an interest in issues of militarism, economic injustice, and Palestinian rights. It has also provoked attempts at censorship. Earlier this year more than 44,000 people, including actor Mark Ruffalo, musician Kae Tempest and philosopher Cornel West, came to the aid of Lowkey, successfully calling on Spotify to resist pressure from the lobby group ‘We Believe in Israel’ that sought to have him deplatformed.
Lowkey has been singled out for continuous harassment. What also makes his case significant is that a leading part in the effort to ban him from Tolpuddle was taken by one of the largest unions in Britain, the GMB. Its General Secretary, Gary Smith, wrote to a Festival organiser announcing his ‘severe doubts’ about Lowkey’s appearance and implying that it somehow carried a risk of promoting antisemitism.
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The Rabinovich Foundation obligates filmmakers to whitewash apartheid and ethnic cleansing
Since launching in 2015, Artists for Palestine UK has advocated for artists and arts organisations to refuse professional engagements with Israel’s complicit cultural sector. We have helped publicise much information in support of arts professionals taking these stands.
We have now obtained a full copy of the standard contract of the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts’ Israel Cinema Project that filmmakers must sign before receiving funding. Rabinovich’s Cinema Project is Israel’s largest film fund.
We are publishing an excerpt of the contract, which shows that the fund insists that filmmakers pledge not to acknowledge Israel’s apartheid or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.
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Pedro Almodovar, Susan Sarandon, Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo, Eric Cantona, Miriam Margolyes, Jim Jarmusch, Naomi Klein and Peter Gabriel call for “meaningful measures to ensure accountability for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and all other Palestinian civilians.”
*photo of Shireen Abu Akleh by AFP
More than a hundred artists, including Hollywood stars, acclaimed authors and prominent musicians, have condemned Israel’s killing of esteemed Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Actors Susan Sarandon, Tilda Swinton, Mark Ruffalo, Kathryn Hahn and Steve Coogan are among the signatories to an open letter calling for “full accountability for the perpetrators of this crime and everyone involved in authorizing it”.
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In another attempt to stifle effective protest, the government will be bringing to Parliament new anti-boycott legislation in the coming months. With new laws put in place, it will become illegal for public bodies to use divestment and procurement bans against oppressive and corrupt regimes, or companies whose actions are destroying the planet.
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. This antidemocratic bill risks blocking campaigners from seeking accountability when institutions and corporations are involved in violations of international law. Artists for Palestine UK is proud to be one of more than 40 organisations which have come together in the Right to Boycott Campaign to oppose the government’s measures. Below is our Campaign’s founding statement. Please share it widely.
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Artists for Palestine UK 