BACBI Culture

• "What is BDS?" (BDS Movement): click here!

  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.

• Omar BARGHOUTI, “Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions. Globalized Palestinian Resistance to Israel's Settler Colonialism and Apartheid” (Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, Current Issues, December 2020, pdf, 42p.): click here!

  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.

• "The case for a cultural boycott of Israel" (BDS Movement): click here!

  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.

• "Palestinian artists & cultural organisations call on internationals to cancel engagements in Israel" : click here!

  “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 for Palestine UK" : click here!

  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."

• "British Writers in Support of Palestine" (BWISP): click here!

  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.

• « OVER 1,000 IRISH ARTISTS PLEDGE TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL IN SUPPORT OF PALESTINE » (Kate Braydan, HotPress, January 25, 2021): click here!

  The 1,034 signatories include actors, writers, poets, painters, sculptors, film-makers, dancers, architects, composers, designers, musicians and others, including many members of Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of artists Aosdána and range from some of Ireland’s most internationally known figures to artists starting out on their careers. “We are very proud to have so many artists sign up to our pledge," IPSC Cultural Liaison Zoë Lawlor said. "Reaching 1,000 signatories is a huge landmark in Irish solidarity with Palestine and a serious statement in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality. As the indigenous Palestinian people endure their 73rd year of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and enforced exile, and western governments fail to sanction Israel, they need the solidarity of people of conscience - and this pledge plays a major part in that,” Lawlor adds. The Pledge was launched by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) in August 2010. It reads as follows: “In response to the call from Palestinian civil society for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge not to avail of any invitation to perform or exhibit in Israel, nor to accept any funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”

• "Top 20 impacts of our collective work for justice in 2020" (Palestinian BDS National Committee, Dec 20, 2020): click here!

  Despite its massive investment of financial, political, diplomatic, propaganda and intelligence resources in its war against the BDS movement, Israel has failed, as some of its own lobby groups today admit, thanks to your support worldwide.

• “Artists must reject ‘bothsidesism’ – because it serves the powerful and entrenches injustice” (Artists for Palestine UK, July 19, 2021): click here!

  Artists for Palestine UK is troubled that the British Actors Network (BAN) has chosen to host an organisation that is funded by the UK government and currently promoted by education secretary, Gavin Williamson, called ‘Solutions Not Sides’. The event is billed as an educational workshop for actors that aims to promote ‘conflict resolution’ as an approach for understanding the situation in Israel-Palestine. A recent report by Human Rights Watch accused Israel of “the crime of apartheid and persecution” against the Palestinian population. We are saddened that BAN, an organisation that is working to challenge abuses of power in theatre and film, does not recognise that it is inappropriate and misleading to apply a conflict resolution model while the very grave crimes of apartheid and persecution – with all the violence and trauma these entail – persist.

• "32 Museum Directors Lead Calls for German Parliament to Reverse BDS Ruling" (Hakim Bishara, Hyperallergic, December 14, 2020): click here!

  Hundreds of artists, academics, and writers called on German parliament to reverse a resolution from last year that labels the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as “anti-Semitic.”

• Shirly BAHAR: “Documentary Cinema in Israel-Palestine. Performance, the Body, the Home." I.B.Tauris, 29 July 2021, hb ISBN 9781838606824, 248p., £76.50: click here!

  With the upsurge in violence that came with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, a new wave of documentaries emerged that centered on Palestinian and Mizrahim experiences of pain and oppression under Israeli occupation and the mainstream Israeli-dominated public realm. This book explores how Palestinians and Mizrahim perform this entangled experience of oppression on screen.

• Jeff HALPER: “Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State." Pluto Press, 2021, pb ISBN 978 0 7453 4339 6, 244p. Foreword by Nadia Naser-Najjab.
• Ronnie BARKAN: “Un État (d’esprit) d’apartheid” (Charleroi pour la Palestine, Dec 4, 2020): click here!

  “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.

• SUSAN ABULHAWA: "Abulhawa on her Palestinian epic: ‘My exile has defined my life and I don’t need to account for the sensitivities of the people who did that to me.’ Phil Weiss interviews Susan Abulhawa about her new novel "Against the Loveless World." (Mondoweiss, Dec 3, 2020): click here!

  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.

• Rashid KHALIDI, "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance." Profile Books, Feb 6, 2020, hardback, 9781781259337, 336p. Price (The Guardian Bookshop): £21.00 (£25.00): click here!

  Avi Shlaim. "Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict," Noam Chomsky.

• *PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN (19) WEST BANK & (8) GAZA STRIP CAMPS (pdf, 2p.): click here!
• *List of (150) Solidarity with Palestine Organisations: click here!
• *List of (20) Jewish Solidarity Movements: click here!
• *List of (108) Palestinian NGOs: click here!
• *List of (41) Israeli NGOs: click here!
• *List of (16) Israeli Critical Academic Voices: click here!
• *List of (101) Palestinian & Israeli Human Rights Associations (24/12/2020, pdf): click here!