[Boycott - Cultural]

John Berger rallies artists for cultural boycott of Israel

Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent, The Guardian
15 December 2006

The celebrated novelist, critic and artist John Berger today calls on British writers and artists to undertake a "cultural boycott" of Israel. In a letter to the Guardian, co-signed by, among others, the artist Cornelia Parker, the musician Brian Eno, and writers Arundhati Roy and Ahdaf Soueif, Berger calls for support for "our Palestinian and Israeli colleagues". He suggests boycott tactics; in his case it meant declining to be published by a large mainstream Israeli publisher, he says.

Yesterday he said of the boycott: "It could be a factor in Israeli policy changing. Of course its effects will not be gigantic but it is a way of not staying silent. It is a very personal call ... a way of encouraging the very courageous Israelis who oppose their government and an encouragement to Palestinians to somehow go on surviving." He made a clear distinction between individuals and state-sponsored events or institutions. "It is not a question of boycotting Israeli artists," he said.

The film-maker Ken Loach, who backs the boycott, said he would not take part in state-sponsored Israeli film festivals.

However, Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, said: "There are countless Israelis who vehemently oppose their government ... many are artists and academics, and none of them are prevented from expressing their opposition ... It seems profoundly counter-productive to cease contact with precisely that section of Israeli society most likely to provoke a change in direction within Israel."

Richard Eyre, the theatre director, said: "I would have said during apartheid in South Africa sanctions ... were effective, but so many people since then have said they were counterproductive. It's not cut and dried. Anything that boycotts Israel means we are in danger of cutting off access to [those] we should be speaking to."

The playwright Mark Ravenhill said it was good to keep a dialogue open with those challenging the government. "A cultural boycott runs the risk of stopping that dialogue and support." Michael Berkeley, the composer, said: "Sometimes it is only through the arts that a link remains open."

Signatories

John Berger, novelist, painter, art critic and philosopher

Brian Eno, electronic musician, music theorist and record producer

Sophie Fiennes, film director

Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer

Reem Kelani, Palestinian singer

Leon Rosselson, musician and writer

Steven Rose, scientist

Ahdaf Soueif, author

Arundhati Roy, Booker Prize winner

Elia Suleiman, film director and actor, and 85 others

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1972653,00.html

Letters

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,1976508,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,1975119,00.html

John Berger and others' call for a cultural boycott of Israel (Letters, December 15) is wholly to be supported. The appalling human rights record of Israel during its 39-year occupation of Palestinian territories is amply documented, not least by Israel human rights organisations and in the writings of Uri Avnery, Norman Finkelstein, Baruch Kimmerling, Tanya Reinhardt and many others.

Yet while continuing to carry out murder, torture, dispossession, the building of a wall on occupied land, as well as settlements, and the maintenance of an apartheid-like situation, Israel has continued to maintain full diplomatic, trading and cultural relations with other western states, not to mention its large US financial support. Israel is in receipt of trading privileges with the EU conditional upon its observation of certain norms of human rights, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Association agreement, but the latter clause remains a dead letter. A cultural boycott would be a first step towards demonstrating that such relationships must not be allowed to continue until Israeli policy and actions change significantly.

Ian Pace
Croydon, Surrey

As a signatory of the letter supporting a cultural boycott of Israel, may I make the following points?

1) The boycott is not, as the objectors seem to think, aimed at individual Israelis but at state-sponsored events and institutions.
2) There are apartheid-like laws in Israel - for example, the right of return that applies only to Jews, the ban on non-Jews owning state land, the bar on any Palestinian Israeli from living in Israel with a Palestinian spouse not resident in Israel. In the occupied territories roads are maintained for Jews only.
3) By defining itself as a Jewish state, Israel denies full citizenship to its non-Jewish population.
4) Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is threatened, in the long run, by what Israelis like to call "the demographic problem". To put it crudely, too many Arabs. The policy of "transfer", one way or another, will be put into practice, continuing the ethnic cleansing started in 1948.
5) I may not live to see it, but I believe the only just solution is a single secular state with equal rights for all its citizens.

Leon Rosselson
Wembley Park, Middlesex

As a university student during the apartheid regime, the international cultural boycott was seen by all students as a necessary corrective to the falsity of the notion of a "liberal enclave", untouched by establishment influence. Unfortunately, rogue states - notably Israel - continued to trade with, and supply arms to, the regime.

Stewart Henderson
Brighton, East Sussex

Also Of Interest