On This Day

Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.

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30 August

Batsheva stencilledISRAELI DANCE COMPANY PROTESTED OUT OF UK
On this day in 2012, the first performance by Israeli state-sponsored Batsheva dance troupe opened in Edinburgh. Large and vigorous protests outside the Playhouse Theatre were supplemented by successive interruptions for all three nights in Edinburgh and during each of 16 performance across the UK starting in Edinburgh two months later. The protests generated huge public debate about cultural boycott of Israel, The Israeli Ambassador and the Culture Minister both attended the “non-political” opening night.

 

 

 

الاحتجاج المتواصل أدى الى طرد شركة الرقص الاسرائيلية
خارج المملكة المتحدة

30 أغسطس

في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2012، افتُتح في أدنبره أول عرض لفرقة الرقص باتشيفا التي ترعاها اسرائيل. تم استكمال الاحتجاجات الكبيرة والصاخبة خارج بيت المسرح من خلال عمليات التشويش المتتالية طوال الليالي الثلاث في إدنبرة وخلال كل أداء من ال 16عرضًا في جميع أنحاء المملكة المتحدة بعد شهرين بدءًا من إدنبرة. أثارت الاحتجاجات نقاشا عاما كبيرا حول المقاطعة الثقافية لإسرائيل، حضر كل من السفير الإسرائيلي ووزير الثقافة ليلة الافتتاح "غير السياسية".

Festival chief Jonathan Mills warns protesters ‘stay away from Israeli dancers’
The above headline appeared in the Scotsman on Tuesday, above an article on the performances by Israeli State-financed Batsheva Dance Company, who work within the Brand Israel project of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To underline the role of such events in whitewashing the Apartheid State, the Jewish Chronicle reports that an Israeli Government Minister will be attending one of Batsheva’s three Edinburgh performances from Thursday 30th August to Saturday September 1st. This explicit politicisation of Batsheva’s performances pulls the rug from under the EIF’s Jonathan Mills’ preposterous effort to deny the link between Batsheva and the Israeli Government.

Mills was an organiser and speaker at the International Culture Summit, where several key speakers and commentators referred to the value of culture in the projection of the state’s “soft power”. Behind the innumerable vague platitudes, the fundamental working assumption of the Culture Summit was that the business of culture is a very political affair. Paul Docherty of the British Council noted “a strong sense that culture is moving up the political agenda, notions of soft power and all that” and his boss, the British Council CEO, Martin Davidson, offered Libya as an example of his organisation’s work to shape social development.


5-minute video: unusually honest coverage by BBC 2 of the campaign - backed by prominet Scottish cultural figures - against these ambassadors of Israeli apartheid. Also includes political platitudes from expected quarters.

Harvard’s Joseph Nye, a former US Assistant Secretary of Defence who coined the term “soft power”, explains that military conquest is essential, but not sufficient; soft power is the key to winning the ideological battle in places such as the Middle East. “It’s not just whose army wins; it’s whose narrative wins,” he says. Israel, though, is a partial exception; it’s narrative has little chance of winning among the great majority of people. Brand Israel, therefore, works to change the focus of international attention away from Israel’s massive human rights violations, and cultural tours are a key component of this strategy.

US Protests
"The yelling and cheering could be heard more than a block away from the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Saturday evening. For an hour and a half before Batsheva Dance Company performed at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, protesters gathered in support of a cultural boycott of Israel, part of the larger Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against the country. The protesters' signs, held high around a Palestinian flag waving in the frigid wind, featured slogans like "Don't dance around apartheid" and "Batsheva proud ambassador of racism."

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network already organized a protest of the company in Chicago and Barghouti says additional demonstrations are planned at its next stops. That's hardly a surprise to Batsheva; the company was met with protests from Adalah when it was last at BAM in 2014 and 2012. Pro-Palestinian activists interrupted the company's shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2012 and the composer Brian Eno denied Batsheva permission to use his music for Israeli embassy-sponsored performances in Italy in 2016.