Ken Loach & Scottish PSC oppose all racism. No exceptions.

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign Statement
Thursday 21 May, 2009

Ken Loach and the Edinburgh International Film Festival are to be congratulated for distancing the EIFF publicly from the unwelcome embrace of the State of Israel, a state now widely understood to be committing grave crimes against the Palestinian people. Many who would have stayed away will now feel comfortable buying tickets for showings during this important cultural event.

The EIFF joins the cultural and academic boycott of the Israeli State just as this movement gathers momentum, a result of widespread disgust at Israel’s white phosphorus and cluster bomb massacres of civilians, and frustration at UK Government complicity. We see rising public support fuelled by popular revulsion at Israel’s burning of the UN’s Gaza food stocks. We note the increasingly open racist rhetoric from Israeli Ministers, who lack Ben Gurion’s skills in masking ethnic cleansing in the language of ‘freedom’ and ‘socialism’.

We can now see the distinct possibility of repeating the success of the anti-apartheid movement that became strong enough to force our governments to end their support for the brutal regime in South Africa.

Fact 1: Israel massacred many hundreds of people, men, women and children, in Gaza over the New Year.
Fact 2: Israeli bulldozers are still at work demolishing Palestinian homes, and Jewish-only settlements are still being built on land cleared of Arabs for that purpose.
Fact 3: A state is not the same thing as a population; politics is not biology.
Fact 4: Boycott of South Africa enabled many decent people to play an auxiliary role in toppling apartheid there.

If anyone denies one of the four statements above, little can be done for them. The problem may lie in their not knowing the meaning of words, like ‘massacre’, ‘bulldozer’, ‘Jewish-only’, or ‘state’. With a very small number of people, however, it lies in their blatant support for the spectrum of Israeli crimes. (This is the case with the demented Melanie Philips, who seems to deny statements 1 – 3 above, and probably Newton’s First Law as well.)

Huge numbers of people wrote to the Edinburgh International Film Festival to say that they found it unbearable, while Israel continues to starve and imprison the people of Gaza, to support a cultural event that listed the State of Israel among its official supporters. Ken Loach was only the most high-profile member of the film and wider cultural community who could not bring themselves to be publicly associated with the state that has visited state terrorism on the Palestinian people for so long.

Ken Loach stands accused of ‘bullying’ by the pro-war, pro-Israel Spectator’s Alex Massie, for taking a stand for Palestinian human rights. It is easy to dismiss such obvious smears of an outstanding film-maker by a shameless defender of Israeli aggression and racism.

More interestingly, the woman who made the film to be shown at the EIFF, towards which we need take no position, has accused Ken Loach of ‘racism’ in today’s Scotsman. Those familiar with Ken Loach’s films see a body of work that challenges all types of oppression and celebrates the human struggle for freedom. The grounds on which Ms. Tali Shalom-Ezer levels the accusation is that, "Generalising all citizens of Israel as warmongers and racists is racism and outrageous…”. That would be racist, if it were true. It is the opposite of the truth. Israel is a violent, aggressive apartheid state; all citizens of Israel are not ‘warmongers and racists’. Scottish PSC, working in a country that is committing terrible crimes against the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as helping to arm the murderous Israeli Army, salutes those Israelis who actively oppose the crimes of their government.

Ken Loach was widely reported in the press as stating a widely held view that, “Massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make this money unacceptable”. He said clearly that, “it was a boycott against the state of Israel”. Ken Loach and the Scottish PSC, are committed to opposing racism in all its forms, and have long opposed the efforts of Israeli State and pro-Israel bodies to implicate all Israelis, and even all Jews worldwide, as supporters of Israeli crimes, i.e. as ‘warmongers and racists’.

We do not recognise collective guilt – we are only responsible for our own individual actions, or inactions. Most of us can further distinguish (Fact 3 above) between a state and the citizens of that state. We hope that Iraqis and Afghans can distinguish between the invasions and massacres perpetrated by the British State on the one hand, and the citizens of that state, most of whom oppose those crimes, on the other. Just as those of us who have visited Palestine many times know that the great bulk of Palestinians are able to make such a distinction with regard to Jews and the Zionist State.

Ms Shalom-Ezer is also reported as saying that, “as members of the peace camp we are personally hurt by it".  Did Ms. Shalom-Ezer oppose the invasion and massacres in Gaza?  Does she oppose Israel's racist policies towards Palestinians? Where is this ‘peace camp’? Who is in it? Did it oppose the massacres in Gaza? Does she mean the so-called ‘peace camp’ that wants peace while bulldozers roar and ethnic cleansing accelerates? Does she recognise the rights of ethnically cleansed refugees?

Would Ms Shalom-Ezer, or any of her supporters, like to debate these issues during the Film Festival? We at Scottish PSC are more than happy to publicly defend the need for universal human rights as a basis for solving the crisis in Israel/Palestine, and the need to repeat the South African experience of boycott, divestment and sanctions with apartheid Israel.