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Edinburgh International Film Festival
Through grassroots campaigning and the mobilization of artists, filmmakers and community activists, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its allies caused the EIFF (Edinburgh International Film Festival) to reject Israeli Embassy sponsorship of the Festival.
We only learned six years later through the forced publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails that she had set up a group in the US State Department in Washington DC to try to reverse the BDS success. ‘Team America’ failed.
Sponsorship money returned to apartheid Embassy
In April 2014 the prestigious Stills Gallery agreed to return £1,300 Israeli Embassy sponsorship money and SPSC called off the planned three months of daily protests outside the gallery just behind Waverley Station.
2008 Jerusalem Quartet at the Edinburgh Festival
30-40 SPSC members and supporters protested inside and outside a performance by the Jerusalem Quartet, of whom the World Zionist News Agency had said that the Israeli musicians considered “A rifle in one hand and a violin in the other [to be] the ultimate Zionist statement”. Jonathan Mills, EIF Director denied the evidence that the JQ were linked to the Israeli Army and warned us to back off, as he would equally ineffectively on other occasions.
In April 2010 Sheriff John Scott ridiculed and threw out charges of racially-aggravated behaviour against five SPSC members involved in the protest against the Jerusalem Quartet, who have not returned to Scotland.
The protest and trial was covered by the Scottish press. The Herald front page headline following the decision, for example, read “Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism rules sheriff”.
2012 Aug Batsheva There were vigorous protests in Edinburgh and a call for boycott by prominent Scottish cultural figures. We got an unusually fair coverage on prime-time TV. We worked with partners to organise and coordinate protests in every venue of their follow-up UK tour in October including Edinburgh, Manchester, Bradford, London, and Leicester.
The protests raised the profile of the BDS Call and triggered a series of debates on whether cultural boycott of Israel was justified.
The Batsheva management almost left the Brand Israel programme during the Edinburgh protests. The group have not returned to the UK since.
Israeli stater-sponsored artists kicked out of world's biggest arts festival
2014 Another successful campaign of peaceful, noisy protests led to two Israeli State-promoted troupes being ejected from the world’s biggest arts festival. (Two Israeli groups not part of Brand Israel performed unimpeded.) We learn that Israelis artists largely understand that the target of the protests was the Israeli state, not Israelis per se.
2015 Underbelly commissioned five short plays to be performed end to end, followed each time by a discussion of issues raised widely in the Scottish and UK media during the 2014 protests. The plays plus discussions were entitled Walking the Tightrope and SPSC members were included in several of the discussion panels. One discussion included an Israeli diplomat; the Palestinian BNC asked us afterwards to shun Israeli State representatives
Early fake antisemitism claims against SPSC
2016: Israeli ‘peace festival’ at the Fringe Through front groups, the Israeli Embassy organised a so-called ‘peace festival’ (Shalom Festival) to celebrate ‘all things Israel’. The aim was explicitly to weaken and defeat the cultural and general boycott effort that has built up over more than a decade of determined effort. The response was an all-day, ten hour counter-demonstration reminding everyone of the full spectrum of Israeli crimes. The Jewish Chronicle invented a group of us making Nazi salutes, then retreated from this fabrication.
International teamwork at the Fringe August 14th to 17th SPSC members and English, French and German partners – genuine internationalism - maintained a continuous dynamic presence on Middle Meadow Walk at the Fringe promoting cultural BDS, using French-inspired street theatre in an area festooned with Palestinian flags and a multitude of banners.
