April 22, 2014
A Bird is Not a Stone: Palestinian Poetry in Translation
November 2, 2012
The 95th Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
Tim Llewellyn
Karl Sabbagh
John Rose
Kamel Hawwash
Naomi Foyle
Mona Baker
Mike Marqusee
Seni Seneviratne
May 25, 2012
[Report] BWISP / GUPW / PACBI Panel Discussion, Ramallah May 21st 2012
Some writers, British or otherwise, try to give words to the voices they hear in other languages. Here are the words of a Palestinian voice I’m hearing tonight. Perhaps it’s the voice of several loved ones, but also the voice of many I don’t have the privilege of knowing. Listen to the words the voice is quietly saying:
“So we know, don’t we? This is life and we live it, and we don’t repeat ourselves too much. Naturally we argue sometimes. Oddly enough we are among the world’s experts in making the best of it. The lies still being told against us are more than sixty years old. They wall us in ceaselessly. Nevertheless, and despite some of what happens every minute of the day, we make the most of it. But for this life of ours not to become the living death which it also is, we have to continue – nothing can stop us – to proclaim and insist to the world that what we are being forced to live is a monstrous injustice……. Isn’t this how it is?”
John Berger / May 2012
[Naomi Foyle writes:] Capitalising on my visit to the West Bank to visit The Freedom Theatre, PACBI arranged an opportunity for me to share news of BWISP activities with a Palestinian audience, and to learn more about their struggle against Israeli apartheid in a panel discussion with Murad al-Soudani, Secretary-General of the General Union of Palestinian Writers.
The event, held at the Al-Bireh Municipality Hall and chaired by Dr Samia Botmeh, was very well-attended, especially considering that Nakba Commemoration Day and Hunger Strike Solidarity demonstrations were still on-going. Over fifty people were present, filling the hall, and many made contributions to the Q & A. The key results were:
- the creation of an event that broke the cultural siege on the West Bank – let us not forget that I had to hide my visit from Israeli officials or risk certain deportation;
- an opportunity for political networking that clearly demonstrated the current mood of hope, determination and solidarity that characterises the whole BDS campaign;
- the promise of greater strategic links in the future between BWISP and GUPW.
Murad al-Soudani began by declaring that Palestinian culture includes all Palestinians – refugees, the diaspora and those within the West Bank and the 1948 borders. At the same time, he insisted that Palestinian culture is outward-looking and evolving, and seeks to take its rightful place in a context of international exchange. He also framed the academic and cultural boycott as a key strategy in the struggle against the normalisation of Israeli apartheid. This is significant for BWISP members, who may encounter criticisms that only ‘dialogue’ with Israel can bring lasting political change. The message from Occupied Palestine is that our colleagues resoundingly reject any Zionist façade of state-sponsored cultural exchange, which only buys Israel time to consolidate its stranglehold on Palestinian lives and land. al-Soudani also noted that the GUPW has recently passed a motion committing the union to the struggle for freedom for Palestine, something new in its history. This mobilisation of union members is a significant step, as demonstrated by the recent strongly-worded GUPW statement rejecting Tracy Chevalier’s efforts to meet with Palestinian writers while she was violating the boycott. The Union call was heeded, and no Palestinian writer agreed to meet with her.
I then gave a summary of BWISP campaigns, including: protesting Ian McEwan’s acceptance of the Jerusalem Prize; organising the Southbank debate on cultural boycott; our recent efforts to dissuade Tom Rob Smith and Tracy Chevalier from attending the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Festival; and our members’ deep involvement in the on-going Globe Theatre/Boycott Habima campaign. I noted the positive progression of these campaigns, each of which has provoked international debate in the mainstream media:
- each has pushed the issue of cultural boycott deeper into mainstream British discourse, so that now with the Globe Theatre campaign it is no longer possible to brush off boycott arguments with platitudes about freedom of speech; instead, critics of the boycott are being forced to grapple with the real issue – the need to refuse complicity with apartheid and war crimes.
- attempts by Zionists and boycott critics to ignore or misreport our campaigns in the media have increasingly exposed the hypocrisy of the ‘dialogue’ argument;
- the pressure is clearly being felt, as indicated by Chevalier’s misguided attempt to reach out to Palestinians, and the Globe Theatre’s attempts to offer compromise solutions – which were similarly rejected.
I ended my talk with a personal message from John Berger to the audience, which was received with pleasure and gratitude. With his kind permission, I have included it above.
Questioners opened up the discussion in a variety of ways. One noted that international archaeologists have long been operating a silent boycott of Israel, and are emboldened by more vocal campaigns. The role of religion in the conflict came under critical scrutiny: I discussed the need for UK activists to counter accusations of anti-Semitism by making a sharp distinction between Zionism and Judaism, and a questioner highlighted the role of Christian Zionism in cementing the Occupation – something I am aware of from my efforts to challenge Michael Gove’s bias in the application of the Education Act. The importance of Palestinian culture as a sometimes overlooked weapon in the struggle was also discussed, with al-Soudani suggesting that for Palestinians to organise their own international literary festivals would not be a ‘reaction’ to Israeli events (ie, a ‘balancing’ effort) but a positive action in its own right. I cited Ghada Karmi’s comment that of all her books, her memoir has made the most impact on international readers, and here humbly offer the opinion that fiction, poetry and memoir can help scale what Berger calls ‘the wall of lies’ about Palestine.
I was also asked what it took to change a writer’s mind about appearing in Israel, to which I replied I wish I knew! But thinking about it later, I realised that the current policy of ‘name and shame’ is the most useful strategy we have. Of course, this is initially intended to chastise writers for breaking an international picket line, and as such may be misinterpreted as a purely punitive measure. But shame is such an uncomfortable negative emotion it may in the long run provoke a change of conscience. Certainly when I have felt shame in my personal life I have altered my behaviour in order not to experience it again. Some writers, like Ian McEwan and Tom Rob Smith, appear to be impervious to shame, but others, like Chevalier, may feel it at some level, and thus be prompted to question their own blind participation in Israeli propaganda events. It is important to note that the door is open for such writers to communicate with Palestinians in the future – just not while they are actively violating the boycott.
In conclusion, BWISP members and all UK boycott activists will be honoured to know that questioner after questioner thanked us profusely for our efforts on their behalf. One had clearly been unaware of the amount of BDS campaigning in the UK, so the event was a chance to demonstrate to him the strength of UK resistance; another remarked that he felt Palestine’s ‘South Africa moment’ was approaching – a truly hopeful statement, but one that felt not unreasonable given recent BDS successes, and the powerful sense of unity and indeed excitement in the room.
May 16, 2012
Update on Mishkenot Campaign
For background to this update please see previous posts.
In recent developments, according to Haaretz, Tracy Chevalier’s misguided attempt to meet with Palestinian writers was rebuffed; while the festival organiser has radically misrepresented the BWISP campaign as an abusive attack. Readers of the original letter will know that it was very respectful, and indeed, praised both Chevalier and Tom Rob Smith for their humanitarian concerns. Subsequent posts have expressed our disappointment and frustration at the lack of response from the writers, but at no time have they been abusive.
From Haaretz:
Note:
Tom Rob Smith himself, in an op-ed for the ultra-right-wing journal Israel HaYom described the campaign as intense, but not aggressive. For an independent reaction to his article, and its false description of the boycott, please see Tali Shapiro’s article in Pulse Media.
April 6, 2012
Shakespeare’s Globe: Disinvite Habima!
Many thanks to BWISP member Eleanor Kilroy for her sustained work on the on-going Shakespeare’s Globe ‘Disinvite Habima’ campaign, summarised here in her comprehensive article for Mondoweiss, reposted with permission.
English effort to boycott Israeli theater is likened to…. ‘Nazi book-burning’
In the one week since their Guardian letter, ‘Dismay at Globe invitation’ to the Israeli Habima theatre, was published, signatories such as Emma Thompson and Mark Rylance have been vilified in some quarters. The Jewish Chronicle was expected to hit back the hardest; it has been following the story since late last year, even before Habima’s planned involvement in the Globe to Globe Shakespeare festival aroused opposition, initially from the Israeli organisation Boycott from Within.
In an October 2011 JC article, ‘Israelis fear protests at Globe Shakespeare festival‘, a Habima spokesperson, Rut Tonn, described the Palestinian theatre company Ashtar’s appearance in the same festival as “a blessing”, and an example of “collaborations which will help with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” But Ashtar has refuted any suggestion that its appearance in the festival four weeks before Habima’s implies any sort of balance, and said in a letter to the Globe this February:
“They have insinuated cooperation with us to undermine the growing cultural boycott of complicit Israeli institutions.”
Now The Jewish Chronicle has fashioned its best headline yet out of a quote from a British playwright:
Theatre ban ‘like Nazi book burning’ say West End stars
The call for a boycott of Habima, which was founded by Jews in Moscow in 1905, was condemned by Sir Arnold [Wesker], who said that “depriving an audience of an artistic experience is like the Nazis burning the books of the finest minds and talents of Europe”.
Habima’s artistic director Ilan Ronen, responding to the Guardian letter, reiterated this week in Haaretz the falsehood that illegal West Bank settlements are part of Israel. This is the line that Habima co-manager Odelia Friedman took in front of the Knesset in 2010:
“As a national theater company, Habima will perform for all residents of Israel. Residents of Ariel are residents of Israel and Habima will stage shows for them”.
The same Odelia Friedman declared just two months ago that the Globe invitation was ‘an honourable accomplishment for the State of Israel’, in the spirit of the infamous 2005 statement by Israel’s Foreign Ministry: “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.” Yet the Globe and its apologists insist on equating the Palestinian boycott of Israeli institutions with an attack on individual (in some cases, Jewish) artistic freedom.
Last night, at a rather chaotic Dash Café London event “Art & Conflict – The Case of Syria”, my Reel Festivals colleague Dan Gorman gave an example of the Syrian Ba’athist regime’s attempt to co-opt their independent cultural festival in 2011, months after the uprising began. The Reel Festivals organisers abandoned plans to stage events in Syria upon seeing the Syrian authorities’ use of cultural events to support their narrative of popular support for the government, with events such as the “Oath of Loyalty to the Homeland festival” last July.
In this interminable propaganda piece by the SANA news agency on the ‘festival’, the following quote is typical: ‘Artist Subhi al-Rifa’ai said “We came here today to show the world that no one can undermine our country and national unity”.’ Crude rhetoric compared to the whitewash of The Jewish Chronicle and Ynet, and yet the parallels should be noted.
I have little doubt that several of the participating Syrian artists were too fearful for their lives to decline the invitation to front this state-sponsored event – the very antithesis of culture, just as the ethnically privileged Jewish Israeli actors in Habima dare not risk careers and government subsidies. As BWISP colleague, Naomi Foyle has stated in response to the Globe’s repeated claim that all Habima company actors are closet dissidents:
“If I were a conflicted Habima actor I would be glad of a boycott that might pressure my employers and state funders to rethink their illegal and profoundly destructive policies.”
December 3, 2011
Remi Kanazi in Brighton – Videolink
Thanks to Innovative Minds for recording and posting Remi’s brilliant Brighton gig, along with more pix and poems from his English tour. Click and scroll down to see:
Remi Kanazi in Brighton [90 minute video]
October 30, 2011
Poetic Injustice: Remi Kanazi UK Tour!
BWISP is excited! After his storming performance at the Southbank last November, Remi Kanazi hits the UK again, with a three week tour kicking off November 12th in London:
Poetic Injustice
an evening of political performance poetry
with Remi Kanazi & Special Guests
Zita Holbourne, Rafeef Ziadah, Omar Offendum
Sat 12 Nov 2011, 7.15pm// Tabernacle, Powis Square, London W11 2AY
REMI KANAZI Palestinian-American Performance poet, writer, and activist based in New York City, Remi is the editor of Poets For Palestine and the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine. His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world and his poetry has taken him across North America and the Middle East. He recently appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well as Poetry International at London’s Southbank. He is a recurring writer in residence and advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop.
www.poeticinjustice.net
RAFEEF ZIADAH is a Canadian-Palestinian spoken word artist and activist. Her debut CD Hadeel is dedicated to Palestinian youth, who still fly kites in the face of F16 bombers, who still remember the names if their villages in Palestine and still hear the sound of Hadeel (cooing of doves) over Gaza. www.rafeefziadah.ca
OMAR OFFENDUM is a Syrian-American Hip hop artist, author and producer- born in the KSA, raised in the USA , and repeatedly hassled by the TSA. His solo release in 2010 was affectionately dubbed “SyrianamericanA”. www.offendum.com
ZITA HOLBOURNE is a poet, artist and activist. Former member of Brothaman Poetry Collective she campaigns for equality, freedom, justice, and democracy through activism, art and poetry. myspace.com/zitaholbourne.
Book here.
October Early Bird Concessions / NUS £6.00
October Early Bird General Admission £8.00
Doors open: 7.15pm – Show starts at 8pm
N.B. Concessions are those on job seekers allowance or full time students (JSA/NUS cards must be shown to the box office).
Remi Kanazi UK Tour:
Nov 12: London
Nov 13 London
Nov 14: Cambridge
Nov 15: Brighton
Nov 16: Portsmouth
Nov 17: Southampton
Nov 18: Dorset
Nov 19: Bristol
Nov 20: Bristol
Nov 21: Oxford
Nov 22: Birmingham
Nov 23: Liverpool
Nov 24: Nottingham
Nov 25: Leicester
Nov 26: Leeds
Nov 27: Newcastle
Nov 28: Manchester
Nov 29: London
For more information on the above dates contact:
uktour.remikanazi@gmail.com
Telephone: 020 7700 6198
July 23, 2011
July 20, 2011
When will Howard Jacobson see the Palestinians?
By Naomi Foyle
As the third co-founder of British Writers In Support of Palestine, I also feel compelled to respond to Howard Jacobson’s attack on the integrity and intelligence of Alice Walker, who chose to attempt to sail to Gaza with the sabotaged Freedom Flotilla II. While I disagree profoundly and heatedly with Jacobson’s arguments, I recognize that they are held not only by the defenders of Israel, but also by many undecided observers of the conflict in the Middle East. I will therefore attempt to reply calmly in the spirit of dialogue and engagement I myself aspire to at this stage in the ‘ethical history’ of humanity (let us remember, Howard, that ‘mankind’ is nowhere without womankind).
Alice Walker sets her courageous decision to sail to Gaza firmly in the context of the civil rights movement, and its non-violent protests against intolerable oppression. She also makes it abundantly clear that the loving bravery of Jewish human rights activists, including her own husband, has inspired her to put her own body in the potential line of fire. Yet Howard Jacobson makes no mention whatsoever of segregation in America or Israel when he besmirches her intentions. And reading his article one might easily conclude that he is accusing Alice Walker of being a naive anti-Semite: guilty of ‘a highly charged emotionalism disguising an action that, by its very partiality, chooses the Palestinian child over the Israeli.’ Ignoring her historical arguments, and personal experience of resisting racial prejudice, Jacobson instead narrows his focus to a gross over-simplification and distortion of the ‘facts on the ground’. The blockade of Gaza, he claims, is necessary because Hamas fires rockets at Israeli children, and refuses to recognize the state of Israel. Walker, he implies by citing Don Quixote, is tilting at windmills: foolishly demonizing the innocent folk of Israel, and its military.
Let me not dwell on Jacobson’s patronizing attitude to a literary giant, a writer who in both word and deed has made an incalculable contribution to the global struggle for human rights. Instead, I will examine his arguments, such as they are. For the conflict in the Middle East is not nearly as simple as Jacobson would have his readers believe. To begin with the rockets. An understanding of context is essential if one is to get to grips with the moral questions at stake here. Hamas fires their Qassams from and into a political context in which Israel is a brutal occupying power that routinely steals Palestinian land, trees and water, and humiliates, imprisons and tortures Palestinians on the slightest pretext. In Gaza, the seriously ill are denied access to Israeli hospitals, and die of treatable conditions; pregnant women die at checkpoints; and IDF military attacks have poisoned the water supplies to the extent that babies are now being born with a potentially lethal blood disorder – ‘blue babies’. Under international law, occupied people have the legal right to defend themselves against such abuses: abuse in this case so systemic it is indistinguishable from ethnic cleansing, or slow genocide. This is what Hamas and its supporters believe it is doing – legitimately resisting an occupying force: Sderot, after all, was built on the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian village, Najd.
But while the Palestinians have as much right to a military as any nation, self-defence does not include deliberately targeting civilians. Here, again, context is crucial: Israel is guilty of killing and punishing civilians on a scale that dwarfs the impact of the rockets. Children, old people, families, unarmed refugees, members of peaceful protests: IDF soldiers, themselves mostly teenage conscripts, have killed them all. It is difficult to get exact numbers, but based on statistics provided by human rights group B’Tselem and the Israeli Ministry Foreign Affairs, I have calculated [1] that in the last four years the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli civilian deaths stands at 33:1, while that of child deaths is a heart-stopping 100:1. By condemning the rocket attacks without breathing a word of Israeli atrocities, Howard Jacobson glaringly exposes his own partiality: his blind loyalty to an oppressive regime, a state that calls itself democratic, but is better described as a militant ethnocracy. At the same time, if Israel is wrong to target civilians, then so too is the militant wing of Hamas. I do condemn the rocket attacks on civilian centres. I can well imagine that it must be terrifying to be subjected to random missiles, and to fear that they might kill or maim you or a loved one.
This wall of fear in the Israeli psyche, however, tragically prevents the country’s citizens from seeing the far greater suffering of those on the other side of that barrier. As Omar Barghouti, key architect of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, recently pointed out, while the Israelis claim they are afraid of being annihilated, it is the Palestinians who, day by day, year after year, are being ‘disappeared’. One only has to look at the maps of the Holy Land since 1948 to perceive the self-evident truth of this statement. It is obvious to me that the root cause of the pain experienced by both sides is Israel’s aggressive expansionism and apartheid policies. Hamas, after all, regularly offers Israel ten year cease-fires, which Israel just as regularly rejects. And the Palestine Papers demonstrated conclusively that Israel has never been a partner for peace.
I also believe that in order to dismantle all the walls – concrete and psychological – that divide the Holy Land, it is necessary to defend the human rights of everyone in the region. I joined the BDS movement to order to help build a non-violent alternative to missile attacks on Israel. But – and this is a crucial ‘but’ – much as I wish Israeli children to be able to sleep safely at night, unlike Howard Jacobson, I do not think that the firing of rockets at Sderot justifies the medieval siege of an entire civilian population.
Even at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, did the UK government blockade and carpet-bomb Belfast? Such a course of action would have been unthinkable. But the illegal siege of Gaza has continued for five years now, with no end in sight. In this time, Israel has prevented the import of basic necessities including concrete, paper, food and medicine. Howard Jacobson complains that Alice Walker’s ship is carrying: “Letters expressing solidarity and love.’ Not,’ he scoffs, ‘presumably, for Israeli children. Perhaps it is thought that Israeli children are the recipients of enough love already.’ Well, Howard, they are certainly at least the recipients of enough food, which is more than Gazan children can say. Chillingly, Israel has calculated the caloric needs of the population, and has indeed, as it boasted in 2006, ‘put the Palestinians on a diet’ by deliberately letting in less to eat than the people need.
The siege has also involved fatal IDF sniper attacks on Palestinian farmers, and a three week military assault in which schools, hospitals, mosques and homes were bombed, and over 1400 Palestinians, over 400 of them children, were killed. Operation Cast Lead also subjected Gaza to the use of white phosphorus, illegal due to the extreme suffering to which it subjects the human body. Who, I ask, is the worse ‘terrorist’ in this conflict? And why cannot Howard Jacobson see that it is the hugely disproportionate violence meted out by Israel that turns people like Alice Walker into passionate supporters of the rights of the Palestinians?
But Howard Jacobson does not want to talk about the horrific mass killing of Palestinian civilians we all saw on television. He wants to talk about Hamas. So let me now challenge a central Israeli advocacy shibboleth: that Hamas refuses to recognize the state of Israel. Hamas, in fact, was a co-signatory to the 2006 ‘Palestinian Prisoners Document’, which – while later set aside due to internal disagreements – expresses a willingness to accept the 1967 borders of the State of Israel, subject to negotiations. Such negotiations should have started when Hamas was democratically elected. In discussions with political opponents, surely one must set compromise as an end-goal, not demand it as a pre-condition. Let me state the truth, as clear as clean water for Howard Jacobson to drink: it is Israel that refuses to recognize the State of Palestine, and until it does so, there will be no peace for any of its children.
It is only through justice that real and lasting peace can come. And when international governments look away, rebuke Israel but do not punish it for mass killing, torture and theft, then international civilians must step forward. Yes, the Freedom Flotillas are political acts – all human acts are political, and emotional, and spiritual! And yes, they are provocations. They are intended to provoke, not Israeli commandos, but world leaders – to do what they should have done long ago: free Gaza.
Finally, let me try to explain to Howard Jacobson the significance of the name ‘The Audacity of Hope’. Palestinians, I have learned, do not use the word ‘hope’ lightly. Their hopes as a people are continually dashed against a wall of Israeli intransigence and international indifference. The central pillar in the Palestinian psyche is sumud, meaning, roughly, ‘steadfastness’. All that ordinary Palestinians can do is not give up. Not give up their land, not give up their struggle, and not surrender their humanity. For them, to hope is truly an audacious act. In this spirit, I call on Howard Jacobson to surmount the walls of fear in his own heart and mind, and finally acknowledge that the state of Israel was founded on a fundamental injustice that only the state of Israel can apologise for and undo. I call on him to retract his sneering tilt at Alice Walker, and channel his own considerable intellectual powers into persuading Israelis that the time is long overdue to honour the basic human rights and legitimate national aspirations of the Palestinian people. And if he cannot yet do all that, I respectfully ask him to converse with me on these issues, in whatever form he chooses: live public debate; an exchange of private or public letters; or a private meeting.
__________________________________________________________
[1] Wikipedia provides a chart of civilian deaths in the conflict drawn from Israeli human rights group B’tselem and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This chart includes intra-Palestinian casualties, making it harder to draw exact conclusions. But discounting the internal casualties, from 1987-2010 the average number of Israeli fatalities per year was 65 (including an average of 6 children per year); the number of Palestinian deaths per year was 276 (including 70 children per year). This is a ratio of 4:1 total Palestinians killed to Israelis, and nearly 12:1 children.
Since the end of the second intifada in 2006, and the completion of most of the Apartheid Wall, the numbers of Israeli deaths per year have dropped dramatically – averaging 16 fatalities per year from 2007-2010, including the total loss of 5 children in four years. In that same period, Palestinian fatalities have risen. Allowing the figure for 2009 to stand – it represents the casualties of Operation Cast Lead – subtracting 20% from the totals of the other three years (to account for internal casualties); and assuming that the Palestinians did not kill any of their own children; the average yearly number of fatalities was 529 (including 125 children per year [total 503]). This represents ratios of 33:1 (Palestinians to Israelis killed) and 100:1 (Palestinian to Israeli children killed) in the last four years. I note that, as the real number of Palestinian casualties has risen, while the Wall is making Israelis more secure, it is making Palestinians vastly less safe.
June 12, 2011
[July 10th] Southbank Debate: Why Boycott Culture?
BWISP is very pleased to announce the following high-profile debate on cultural boycott, featuring the architect of BDS, Omar Barghouti, and BWISP member Seni Seneviratne. We look forward to seeing you there, and to hearing your questions from the floor.
Sunday July 10th
7 pm, The Purcell Room
The Southbank Centre
£10 / £5 concessions (limited number)
WHY BOYCOTT CULTURE?
Where basic freedoms are denied and democratic remedies blocked off, cultural boycott by world civil society is a viable and effective political strategy; indeed a moral imperative.
Supporting the motion:
Omar Barghouti – author of BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket Press).
Seni Seneviratne – British-Sri Lankan poet and performer, author of Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin (Peepal Tree Press).
Opposing the motion:
Carol Gould – ex-patriate American author, film maker, and ‘a vocal critic of what she sees as increasing anti-Americanism and antisemitism in Britain’.
plus one other speaker TBA.