NO ISRAELI FUNDING OF
THE ARTS
LETTER
TO CINEMAS HOSTING THE UK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
We are writing to you as
one of the cinemas hosting the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF) 6-23 November,
2014, to ask that you reconsider.
Who we are
We are a diverse group,
including Israeli and other Jewish people, most of us local to, and often in
the audience of, the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, northwest London. In 2012
local residents leafleted the cinema to oppose its hosting of the Israeli-sponsored
UKJFF; in 2013 we protested outside the Tricycle when it again hosted the
UKJFF. (The protests were called by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist
Network.)
Tricycle / UKJFF
This year, many including
ourselves, welcomed the Tricycle’s stand against the festival’s funding by
the Israeli Embassy during Israel’s 50-day slaughter on Gaza.
The Tricycle had offered
the organisers of the UKJFF replacement funding so that the film festival
could go ahead at the Tricycle. But the UKJFF refused their offer and
to dissociate itself from the Israeli government – the priority was Israeli
sponsorship, rather than the film festival.
Is the UKJFF merely a means to a political end, to give Israel a
humanist image?
Who attacked the
Tricycle
The Government’s Chief
Whip, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the Israeli
Ambassador, each publicly attacked the Tricycle for having refused Israeli
sponsorship. They slandered the
Tricycle by accusing it of antisemitism; as did donors and local councillors
who threatened to withdraw funds and involve the Charity Commission.
Who defended the
Tricycle
Support came from National
Theatre director, Nicholas Hytner, acclaimed
director Lenny Abrahamson; over 500 artists, including prominent theatre
directors and playwrights, some of whom affirmed “We artists have a right to
boycott” (letter to the Stage); and note the artists’ solidarity page: “The Tricycle Theatre is Not Anti-Semitic.
In July, Scottish artists, including National Poet Liz Lochhead, signed an open letter in The Herald protesting an Israeli-funded theatre company at the
Edinburgh Fringe. After vociferous
public protest, the show closed after one performance.
Following the Tricycle’s refusal of Israeli funding, the Encounters Film
Festival in Bristol and artists from the 31st Sao Paulo Art Biennial in
Brazil also refused Israeli funding.
What
Israel’s
apologists did
While crying antisemitism,
Israel’s apologists used their attack on the Tricycle to try to distract the
public from Gaza: from seeing Israeli politicians, religious authorities,
journalists and the public, calling for mass rape, mass murder, even genocide
of Palestinians; from the bloodied tanks, F16s, drones, bunker busters,
sea-to-land missiles, remote-controlled machine guns, that blasted schools,
hospitals, mosques, blocks of flats, children playing football; and from the
2,200 Gazans killed -- over 500 children, and half
a million displaced.
The
Russell Tribunal on Palestine found evidence of war crimes, crimes against
humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement
to genocide.
What happened to the
Tricycle
Even while Gaza was being
destroyed, the Tricycle was forced to retreat. But actress Maureen Lipman,
advocating for the UKJFF admitted that they knew the depth of the community’s
support for the theatre’s stand, announcing that the festival was unlikely to
go back to the Tricycle any time soon.
That
stand reaffirmed that the arts
are social and political. It was
welcomed by anti-racists everywhere. And please note: both the local council
and the Arts Council ruled out loss of funding.
What
we want you to do
The assistant manager of the Everyman cinema insisted that “refusing to host
any arts festival on political grounds will cause more harm than good.”
(Email, 10 September 2014.) The Everyman’s is not a principled position – it
is complicity and appeasement. It is
the argument of those who refused to boycott South African apartheid.
Who
knows better than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a proponent of cultural boycott,
who said, “We in South Africa know about oppression and occupation and know
about the power of BDS” (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions)?
We
ask that you take direction from the anti-racist, non-violent,
Palestinian-led BDS movement.
We
ask that you refuse to host the UKJFF
– not because it is Jewish, of course, but because it is funded by the
Israeli Embassy. The embassy’s job,
especially in London (the boycott “hub”) is to promote what it calls Brand
Israel – state-sponsored propaganda, designed to camouflage Israeli brutality
within a smokescreen of culture, including film festivals.
We
ask that you side with the victims and survivors of the assault on Gaza – not
be part of the cover-up of war crimes being committed against them.
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