BACBI Culture

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.

IN AN ERA when the cause of Palestine has suffered multiple setbacks, and when the Palestinian national movement is at a low point of disunity and strategic incoherence, it is heartening that an initiative launched by Palestinian civil society has achieved resounding global success in the face of fierce opposition by the Israeli state and its supporters.

Israeli government officials have summed up how Israel instrumentalizes culture to cover up its grave violations of international law. "We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank,” one official admitted, “and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture." Israel’s cultural institutions are part and parcel of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid against the Palestinian people. These institutions are clearly implicated, through their silence or active participation, in supporting, justifying and whitewashing Israel’s occupation and systematic denial of Palestinian rights.

“We members of the Palestinian cultural and artistic community in the besieged and occupied Gaza Strip, across historic Palestine and in exile make this heartfelt appeal to our fellow artists from around the world to cancel all scheduled performances, exhibitions and appearances in Israel, or sponsored by the Israeli government or complicit Israeli institutions, whether in-person or online, for as long as Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid persists."

Artists’ Pledge for Palestine: "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."

BWISP exists to support the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, and to promote Palestinian literature and literary events. BWISP members pledge not to attend state-sponsored literary events in Israel, including university conferences.

“Un État (d’esprit) d’apartheid” est une contribution de Ronnie Barkan au livre "Le strade dell’Apartheid" de Luca Greco : 30 photographies en noir et blanc pour témoigner de la condition de ségrégation physique et mentale en Palestine, dans les camps saharaouis et en Irlande du Nord. Déambuler dans les rues de l’Israël de l’apartheid, connu également sous le nom de Palestine, constitue davantage qu’une simple promenade à travers la riche histoire de cette terre, sans oublier la récente vague de violence et d’oppression. Tout en marchant dans les rues, on peut absorber autre chose encore que des expressions de racisme et d’ultra-nationalisme. Il s’agit également d’une balade dans un autre espace – dans un autre monde avec sa mentalité absolument différente.

This is a celebration– and it’s in our podcast this week. A few months back, Susan Abulhawa published “Against the Loveless World”, an epic novel about the travels of a Palestinian refugee who ends up in an Israeli prison. The book deserves wide attention because it is a Palestinian’s story told completely outside the American perspective, and outside the western frame of judgments on Palestine. Abulhawa’s narrator does not check her attitudes toward Zionism or Israel with any of the censors that operate on so many of us, whether at editors’ desks or in our own heads.