Our regular report on Israel’s war on Palestinian cultural life and expression. In this edition:
* How Israel maintains a free and thriving press
* Tatour – progress measured in small victories
* Theatre under seige in Acre
* Mohammed Bakri in France
* On not crossing borders (1): Gaza to Nablus is an impassable road
* On not crossing borders (2): the visa problems of a Palestinian photographer
* On not crossing borders (3): Thom Yorke and Abu Rahss
For the second August in a row, advocates for Israel have used Edinburgh’s huge annual cultural gathering as cover for an attempt to whitewash the state’s decades of oppression and racist discrimination against Palestinians. Under the rubric of coexistence and cultural cooperation, this year’s International Shalom Festival, staged over three days at a community secondary…
As UK band Radiohead prepares to perform in Israel on July 19 in direct breach of the Palestinian boycott, leading boycott supporter Ken Loach has faced defamatory attacks on his integrity.
Artswatch Palestine: April-May 2017.
* Pinkwashing rejected
* The trial of Dareen Tatour
* The detention of Abu Sakha
* The banning of International Women’s Day
* A war of aggression on Amazon
* Ten years of PalFest
* On the red carpet in Gaza
* Regev’s dress at Cannes
ARTWATCH DIGEST: FEBRUARY – MARCH 2017
* Raiding Jenin
* Raiding Aida
* Shutting down a Theatre
* Controlling the film industry
* Putting poetry on trial
* Making Music
Robert Cohen addresses Rabbi Sack’s animated propaganda video designed to undermine support for the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
These are outrageous interferences with free expression, and are direct attacks on academic freedom. As academics with positions at UK universities, we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years. It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel, under the thin disguise of concern about antisemitism.
For as long as artists like Kapoor continue to accept these obscenely large gifts from a state that practices ethnic cleansing, they gift Israel the social license to pursue its ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.
Regev Watch Miri Regev, Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sport, has commented , 27th December, on the change of presidency in the United States: ‘Obama is history,’ said Regev. ‘We have Trump.’ Christian Viveros-Fauné, writing in Artnet, suggests that ‘like Trump, the Likud politician consistently engages in a brazen, counter-factual brand of right-wing populism’. Viveros-Fauné charts the growing scope…
This report looks at the repression of Palestinian cultural expression by Israel and collusion and censorship here in the UK by British government ministers. It traces this relationship back to the wording of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The briefing offers an essential perspective for understanding Israel’s attempts to erase the Palestinian past and future, and proposes practical steps groups such as ours can take here in the UK to end the silencing of Palestinian voices and perspectives.