Artswatch Palestine: October – December 2017
Our regular report on Israel’s war on Palestinian cultural life and expression.
Israel’s culture wars
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Artists to Lorde: individual messages of support
Personal messages of solidarity and support to Lorde from Brian Eno and Roger Water, Peter Garbiel and more…
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Artists’ statements on Trump and occupied Jerusalem
Statements by musicians Peter Gabriel and Robert Wyatt, poet Michael Rosen, playwright Caryl Churchill, writers Selma Dabbagh, Hari Kunzru and Ahmed Masoud, producer Kate Parker and filmmaker Ken Loach – on Trump and the occupation of Jerusalem.
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Israel’s apartheid regime salutes Nick Cave
Nick Cave declared his love for Israel, and the Israeli regime reciprocated, providing further proof, if any were needed, of the propaganda value to Israel of appearances by international artists. We have sampled, and repropduced below, tweets from nine Israeli government bodies and spokespeople and seven lobby groups, all of which work hard to counter the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) human rights movement and promote Israel’s interests.
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Leading writers respond to Nick Cave
“Who would have thought it, that Nick Cave would allow himself to ease the conscience of a major oppressor? No-one is ‘trying to silence artists’, it is children who are being silenced, it is a whole people that is being denied its right to exist, and it is common decency, not artistic freedom, that is at stake in Israel’s ongoing aggression towards the Palestinians… Fighting for common decency is a matter of solidarity — of maintaining a vision of what is right, in the face of overwhelming powers — and he has, by his vanity, broken a picket-line.” Andrew O’Hagan, author.
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Artswatch Palestine: August-September 2017
Not the Radiohead Experience
A musician from East Jerusalem said Israeli officials jeopardised his band’s UK tour last week by withholding his electric guitar at security at Ben-Gurion Airport
Apo Sahagian, the lead singer of Apo and the Apostles, said security officials held his guitar back for further testing, promising that it would be on the next EasyJet flight to Luton, but after three days there was still no sign.
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Why is Jewish Community Centre JW3 celebrating Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat?
‘Dear Raymond Simonson,
We’re reading the blurb for Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat’s presentation on Tuesday at JW3, and curious to know if JW3 as an organisation supports the views it expresses.The blurb says ‘Nir Barkat was 7 years old…when Israel’s capital was finally reunited’. You will know that the United Nations Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and the International Court of Justice consider that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory illegally occupied by Israel. Where does JW3 stand?’
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Artists slam Israel’s planned occupation of London’s Roundhouse
Roger Waters, Ken Loach, Caryl Churchill and Thurston Moore are among many leading artists calling for London’s celebrated Roundhouse to cancel its involvement with a festival designed to promote Israel as a progressive and liberal destination with a ‘glittering’ capital city.
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The naked face of Israel – Ilan Pappé on rebranding Zionism
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has made the following chapter, which focuses on ‘Brand Israel’, available to the BDS movement which seeks to unmask and challenge the weaponisation of culture in Israel’s war against Palestinians.
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Open Letter to the Board of Deputies of British Jews
What are we to make of the UK’s main Jewish organisation calling for the Barbican to remove a video artwork from a science-fiction themed exhibition?
Apparently you had not seen ‘In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain’, the video installation by Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour and Danish author Søren Lind, when you chose to write to the Barbican to demand its removal.
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Artswatch Palestine: June-July 2017
Our regular report on Israel’s war on Palestinian cultural life and expression. In this edition:
* How Israel maintains a free and thriving press
* Tatour – progress measured in small victories
* Theatre under seige in Acre
* Mohammed Bakri in France
* On not crossing borders (1): Gaza to Nablus is an impassable road
* On not crossing borders (2): the visa problems of a Palestinian photographer
* On not crossing borders (3): Thom Yorke and Abu Rahss -
Israeli cultural whitewash fails to impress at Edinburgh Festival Fringe
For the second August in a row, advocates for Israel have used Edinburgh’s huge annual cultural gathering as cover for an attempt to whitewash the state’s decades of oppression and racist discrimination against Palestinians. Under the rubric of coexistence and cultural cooperation, this year’s International Shalom Festival, staged over three days at a community secondary…
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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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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 -
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 -
‘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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Anish Kapoor gifts Israel a PR coup
For as long as artists like Kapoor continue to accept these obscenely large gifts from a state that practices ethnic cleansing, they gift Israel the social license to pursue its ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.
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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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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.
