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.”

• Brief aan Gentse Schepen Sofie Bracke vanwege meer dan 50 academici, auteurs en kunstenaars (BACBI, 20 jan 2020, pdf, 5 blz.): click here!

  Betreft: de vergadering van de Gentse gemeenteraad op 20/1, agendapunt "Intrekking deelname VOKA-missie naar Israël" (Tom De Meester).

• Eva ILLOUZ, "Holocaust, Militarism and Machiavelli's Advice: How Fear Took Over Israel" (Haaretz, Jan 1, 2021, republished by Jewish Voice for Labour): click here!

  "Israel may be the best-defended state in the world, but its people's existence is based on an ethos of constant fear." [JVL Introduction: To understand the conflict in Israel-Palestine we have to understand why Israeli Jews think as they do. This brilliant article in Haaretz by Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz helps us begin to understand. Israeli Jews are afraid. They are not born afraid, but they learn fear from the moment of birth, and their fear is harnessed into a collective fear-driven hate. A similar analysis helps to explain why British diaspora Jews are so frightened of any criticism of Israel, why so many cast Israel's critics as hate objects.]

• Jehad HARB, "Thirteen Years After the West Bank-Gaza Strip Split: Phased Policy Alternatives Between Reunification and Separation" (PSR, Critical Policy Brief, Number 4/2020, July 2020): click here!

  On July 2, 2020, Jibril Rajoub, member of the Fatah Central Committee, and Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, held a joint press conference to announce joint plans to confront the Israeli annexation plan. The joint statement issued by the two men comes after a rift of more than two years. The statement did not refer to a vision of how to end the split and restore unity after thirteen years of internal Palestinian division. The ability of this meeting and subsequent dialogue to bridge differences between the two sides is unclear. The solutions proposed since the 2011 Cairo Agreement to restore unity have failed to reach the intended goal, in part because of their ambitious goal of restoring full reunification.

• Halah AHMAD, "Tourism in Service of Occupation and Annexation" (Al-Shabaka, Oct 13, 2020): click here!

  Tourism has been critical to the Zionist enterprise since the first Zionists settled Palestine. Al-Shabaka policy analyst Halah Ahmad explores the role of tourism, and especially religious tourism, in propagating the Zionist and Israeli-state narratives, focusing on the damaging impacts of Israeli settlement tourism in illegally occupied Palestinian land. She offers recommendations for ethical tourism that promotes Palestinian rights to self-determination.

• François DUBUISSON, "Trump 'Plan' would create a fictitious Palestinian state devoid of rights under international law" (Mondoweiss, Jan 31): click here!

  After being announced shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2017, the "Plan" (modestly called "the Vision") supposed to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was made public on January 28th. It is therefore now possible to analyse its substance in detail, deepening the reflections that have already been made on the basis of the leaks of some of its aspects... In the preamble of the "Plan", a position is taken which results in the exclusion of the whole of international law, as derived from UN resolutions and a range of other texts, as the essential basis for establishing the parameters of the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Amira HASS, “Rewarding the Israeli Attackers in the Settlements" (Haaretz, Oct 22, 2019): click here!

  It’s a system – violence carried out with the army’s full backing and with the aim of expanding, on a daily basis, the area from which Palestinians are driven out.

• Mohammad BAKRI: "Jenin, Jenin" (2002) (Palestine Film Institute, VIMEO): click here!

  Directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, "Jenin Jenin" includes testimony from Jenin residents after the Israeli army's 'Defensive Wall' operation. The city and camp were the scenes of fierce fighting which ended with Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians dead. Palestinians as well as numerous human rights groups accused Israel of committing war crimes in the attack. The United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry, but Israel refused to let its members visit the scene. Banned in Israel, Jenin Jenin is dedicated to Iyad Samudi, the producer of the film, who returned home to Yamun after the shooting of the film was completed. On June 23, as Israeli forces besieged Yamun, Samudi was shot and killed as he was leaving a militarily-closed area with three friends.

• Suha ARRAF: "For Palestinian filmmakers in Israel, it’s loyalty or silence" (+972, Jan 15, 2021): click here!

  Israel’s persecution of actor and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri reflects its desire to censor stories of the occupation while gloating about being a ‘democracy.’

• Samar HAZBOUN: "A defiant aesthetic’: The Palestinian fashion brand trashing stereotypes" (+972, Nov 17, 2020): click here!

  Using art and fashion to highlight diverse voices in Palestinian society, tRASHY's clothing illustrates the challenges Palestinians face in freely expressing their identities to the world.

• "PALESTINE: The Right to the Ruin: Civilizational Absence in the Post-Nakba Landscapes" (The Funambulist): click here!

  What is wrong with these pictures? Start maybe by looking at them all. The landscapes that they show are beautiful and seem to be almost untouched by humans. The problem is that they are taken where Palestinian villages used to exist before 1948.

• Ronit VERED: "The Vanishing of a Legendary Palestinian Pastry" (Haaretz, July 17, 2019): click here!

  It’s said that if you visited Jerusalem without eating this pastry, it’s as if you’d never visited at all. But the legendary mutabbaq shop in the Old City is shuttered. What’s behind the closure after 150 years?

• Chemi SHIFF and Yonathan MIZRACHI: "Using archeology in the service of nationalism" (+972, July 5, 2019): click here!

  The inauguration of a supposed ancient Jewish ‘Pilgrimage Road’ by Ambassador David Friedman and White House envoy Jason Greenblatt is a reminder that archeology is never as neutral as some would like to believe.

• Ahmad MELHEM: "Palestinian police on red alert over antiquities smuggling" (Al-Monitor, July 11, 2019): click here!
• "Gaza's Once Thriving Traditional Crafts Industries Rapidly Disappearing" (Haaretz, July 10, 2019): click here!

  With unemployment rate over 50 percent, goods that once defined the Strip's economy are now almost nonexistent. Craftsmen blame Israeli blockade for economic turmoil.

• Amjad IRAQI: "Don’t wait for Israeli archives to prove what Palestinians already know" (+972, July 7, 2019): click here!

  Israeli authorities are deliberately concealing historical documents to undermine evidence of the state’s dark and violent origins. And the world is still falling for it.

• Mohammed ASAD, "Photo essay: The most beautiful places in Gaza" (Mondoweiss, July 2, 2019): click here!
• Rasha HILWI: "Après les falafel et le houmous, Israël essaie de s'approprier le za'atar" (Collectif Palestine Vaincra, 29 mai, 2019): click here!
• Megan GIOVANETTI: "From Palestine with love: Designer explores postcard power" (Al-Monitor, April 26, 2019): click here!
• Adri NIEUWHOF: ""How Dareen Tatour found a "magic pen" in Israeli prison" (The Electronic Intifada, 12 Feb): click here!

  4 months after her release from an Israeli prison, Palestinian poet and photographer Dareen Tatour received in The Hague the 'Oxfam Novib PEN Award for Freedom of Expression'. Oxfam Novib, the Dutch affiliate of Oxfam, said it awarded Tatour the prize to highlight "the growing repression of critical voices in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories."

• 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!