Saturday’s J14 arrests sparks call for cultural boycott from writers opposed to the BDS movement. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/ Activestills.org)
Last Thursday, Israeli writers swiped a tactic from the BDS movement and called for a cultural boycott against Tel Aviv’s White Night festival, exposing the Jewish exclusivity of the J14 protests.
The boycott was sparked after Saturday’s police violence where 89 Jewish Israelis were arrested while protesting for economic reform. In response, the writers Etgar Keret, Orly Castel-Bloom, Alex Epstein, Dof Alfon, and Yaheli Sobol announced they would not attend the literature festival which is part of an annual municipal cultural celebration. Coincidently Etgar and Castel-Bloom’s involvement comes after years of ignoring requests from the BDS movement to cancel appearances in international literature festivals where the two represented Israel.
Haaretz reported the writers explained their decision in a statement last week:
‘Following the violence of the police against demonstrators for social justice, and many other violent acts over the last week, we have decided to cancel our participation in the White Nights events scheduled to take place this Thursday, under the sponsorship of the Tel Aviv municipality,’ the participants announced. ‘Tel Aviv is a beloved and important city to all of us, but right now it has no reason to celebrate.’
The move to boycott the event comes weeks after J14 organizers barred Palestinian women in the Ma’an workers movement—who planned to discuss labor, not the occupation—from speaking on stage at a demonstration. Conversely, last year the social justice leaders gave a platform to Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich, a rightist Knesset member who supports jailing Israeli leftists who oppose deporting African asylum seekers.
But aren’t they concerned that they will alienate Tel Avivians rather than encouraging dialogue? And why single out Tel Aviv? Is there no police brutality in other Israeli cities or cities around the world? They are boycotting Jews! It’s just like Berlin in 1938.
Thanks for pointing out the hypocrisy, Allison.
Nice. :D
Part of the irony is that Israeli Jews might actually be living pretty high on the hog if they whole-heartedly exploited the Palestinian population as a labor resource.
But they don’t — preferring to exclude them as much as possible — and so a great many Jews are confronted with a life of dreary poverty.
Not to mention, that if Palestinians were fully integrated into the economy as an underclass, even the more impoverished Israeli Jews would tend to see themselves as one of the privileged ‘haves’ and so be reluctant to rock the boat. Something of the kind used to distort Protestant Irish politics in Ulster. One also suspects that French Algeria ran all the better for having the Algerians around for everybody to feel superior to.
Somebody has to be at the bottom of the pecking order. If you remove the Palestinians, it’s just going to have to be Jews — and the Jews in question will tend to resent it. Worse — unlike as with the Palestinians — there’s nothing in Zionist ideology to justify the use of crushing force to silence discontent among Jews.
Witness this uproar.
Colin,
Palestinians from the Israeli occupied West Bank are often found at settlement construction sites. They are there because they have no other source of income.
So Israel’s economy benefits as a whole due to these exploitative practices.