Over 700 British artists representing every field of the arts have taken an Artists’ Pledge for Palestine to boycott Israel culturally or professionally until “it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights”.
The pledge, organized and published by Artists for Palestine UK (APUK) UK, was announcement today on the Letters page at the Guardian in a statement asserting, “The Palestinian catastrophe goes on.”
[W]e are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government. Since the summer war on Gaza, Palestinians have enjoyed no respite from Israel’s unrelenting attack on their land, their livelihood, their right to political existence. “2014,” says the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, was “one of the cruellest and deadliest in the history of the occupation.” The Palestinian catastrophe goes on.
Israel’s wars are fought on the cultural front too. Its army targets Palestinian cultural institutions for attack, and prevents the free movement of cultural workers. Its own theatre companies perform to settler audiences on the West Bank – and those same companies tour the globe as cultural diplomats, in support of “Brand Israel”. During South African apartheid, musicians announced they weren’t going to “play Sun City”. Now we are saying, in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ashkelon or Ariel, we won’t play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops, until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
The full text of the pledge reads:
We support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality. In response to the call from Palestinian artists and cultural workers for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.
Artists for Palestine UK has published 100 statements by signatories.
Among those who have signed the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine are creative people from diverse artistic and cultural backgrounds, including:
– Writers Tariq Ali, William Dalrymple, Aminatta Forna, Bonnie Greer, Mark Haddon, Hari Kunzru, Liz Lochhead, Jimmy McGovern, China Mieville, Andrew O’Hagan, Laurie Penny, Michael Rosen, Gillian Slovo, Ahdaf Soueif, Marina Warner, Benjamin Zephaniah
– Film directors: Mike Hodges, Asif Kapadia, Peter Kosminsky, Mike Leigh, Phyllida Lloyd, Ken Loach, Roger Michell, Michael Radford, Julien Temple
– Comedians: Jeremy Hardy, Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas
– Musicians: Richard Ashcroft, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno, Kate Tempest, Roger Waters, Robert Wyatt
– Actors: Rizwan Ahmed, Anna Carteret, David Calder, Simon McBurney, Miriam Margolyes
– Theatre writers/directors: Caryl Churchill, David Edgar, Dominic Cooke CBE, Sir Jonathan Miller, Mark Ravenhill
– Visual Arts: Phyllida Barlow, John Berger, Jeremy Deller, Mona Hatoum
– Architects: Peter Ahrends, Will Alsop.
Former English PEN president, writer Gillian Slovo, said in a statement on the Artists for Palestine UK website, ‘As a South African I witnessed the way the cultural boycott of South Africa helped apply pressure on the apartheid government and its supporters. This Artists’ Pledge for Palestine has drawn lessons from that boycott to produce an even more nuanced, non-violent way for us to call for change and for justice for all.’
‘Israel’s wars are fought on the cultural front too. Its army targets Palestinian cultural institutions for attack, and prevents the free movement of cultural workers. Its own theatre companies perform to settler audiences on the West Bank – and those same companies tour the globe as cultural diplomats, in support of “Brand Israel”.’
An emailed press release on the initiative said of the artists’ declaration:
It recalled that musicians opposing apartheid in South Africa pledged not to ‘play Sun City’ – Johannesburg’s playground for the rich. In that tradition, today’s pledge signers are undertaking not to collaborate with Israeli state-funded institutions to ‘play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run master-classes or workshops,’ until Israel ends its apartheid policies towards the Palestinians.
The release concluded: ‘We invite all those working in the arts in Britain to join us.’
Artists for Palestine UK (APUK), which organised the pledge, said artists were incensed that speaking out for Palestine regularly attracted smear campaigns by pro-Israel lobbyists. Theatre director Hilary Westlake, a member of the organising collective, said APUK’s message to British artists is: ‘You are not alone. Together we can defend our right to decide whose patronage we accept, despite groundless accusations of antisemitism and threats of financial and reputational ruin.’
Full A-Z list of 700 signatories here
These are brave and good people. They are obviously not intimidated by the fact that they may never be hired by zionist supporters who are powerful in their line of work, and are risking their professions and jobs by signing this pledge. Good luck and thank you to all.
We might as well resign ourselves to the fact that such a pledge will never be signed in the US.
This is marvelous and exciting! Yay!
Good for all 700 artists with conscience putting ‘pen to paper’ and into action! I’m thinking that list will grow… and I’m thinking that other countries might well start their own!
Thank you Annie!
more and more people coming to their senses. Getting the facts.
Thanks Annie
Thanks, Annie!
Great news!
Gone are the times when an act like this has made any impression on Israel or, indeed, anywhere else. It is probably the opposite now – many would ask themselves how obsessed with Israel these people are if in the middle of an incredible, historical scale, chaos in the Mid-East, where what happens in one day dwarfs the entire Israel-Palestine saga, they cannot let their “baby” go. And what about their “home front”- where Europe is approaching battle-field conditions given what goes on now in France, Belgium and other countries in regard to similar issues? Pathetic, indeed.
Besides, their threat is empty – who on earth will miss these people here.