Tag: racism

Our response to the BBC’s shameful statement on ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’

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.”

1,000+ programme-makers condemn censorship and racism after BBC pulls Gaza documentary

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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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Israel’s largest public film fund attaches political strings to its funding

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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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