Israëlische kunstenaars boycotten pop-festival in Berlijn
Veertien Israëlische artiesten en kunstenaars hebben in een open brief opgeroepen tot een boycot van het Pop-Kultur Berlin festival 2019. Het festival wordt onder andere gesteund door de Israëlische ambassadeur in Duitsland.
De groep Israëliërs steunt de Palestijnse oproep om dit festival te mijden: ‘Als Israëlische artiesten, musici en filmmakers ondersteunen wij de Palestijnse oproep om het festival in Berlijn te boycotten, gegeven de medeplichtigheid van het festival met de racistische Israëlische regering’.
Festivaldirecteur: BDS is antisemitisch
De actie van de Israëlische groep komt ook voort uit de verontwaardiging over de houding van de directeur van het festival vorig jaar. Zij noemde de BDS beweging toen ‘antisemitisch’. De veertien ondertekenaars wijzen ook op de open brief die 240 joodse Israëliërs onlangs aan de Duitse regering schreven en waarin zij BDS stellen dat boycots een legitiem en geweldloos middel zijn van verzet (that boycotts are a legitimate and non-violent tool of resistance).
de redactie
Foto: protest in Berlijn tegen het festival (juni 2018)
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Hieronder in Engelse versie de gehele tekst van de brief met daaronder de
August 9, 2019
We are proud to publish the following open letter from Israeli artists in support of the Palestinian call to boycott Pop-Kultur Berlin festival.
[Deutscher Text folgt dem Englischen]
‘As Israeli artists, musicians, and filmmakers, we support the Palestinian call to boycott Pop-Kultur Berlin festival 2019, given its complicity with Israel’s racist regime.
So long as Pop Kultur continues to have the Israeli embassy as a partner, all appearances at the festival will be exploited by the Israeli government as part of its efforts to whitewash its occupation and rebrand itself through culture.
We recognise that there is an urgent moral need to end the Israeli government’s decades-long oppression of millions of Palestinians, and that boycotts rooted in international law and universal principles of human rights are a legitimate, nonviolent, time-honoured tactic.
We are dismayed that the festival director last year wrongly condemned BDS as “antisemitic” in defending their partnership with the Israeli embassy. Even Avi Primor, himself a former Israeli ambassador to Germany, agrees that “the leitmotiv of the BDS movement is justice for the Palestinians”.
We agree with 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars who called on the German government not to endorse the recent anti-Palestinian Bundestag resolution that falsely equated the BDS movement for Palestinian rights with bigotry, adding that they “are shocked that demands for equality and compliance with international law are considered antisemitic”.
We also agree with Ishay Rosen Zvi, a Talmud professor at Tel Aviv University, who decried the attempts in Germany and elsewhere “to erase differences between criticism of Zionism, criticism of Israel, criticism of the policies of the government of Israel and antisemitism”.’
Signed,
Aviad Albert, musician
Dror Dayan, filmmaker and film scholar
Ohal Grietzer, musician
Avi Hershkovitz, film director
Liad Hussein Kantorowicz, performance artist
Jonathan Ofir, violinist and conductor
Michal Peleg, author
Ben Ronen, visual artist
Michal Sapir, writer and musician
Yonatan Shapira, musician
Professor Eyal Sivan, filmmaker
Oriana Weich, artist
Eyal Weizman, artist and architect
Karen Zack, photographer
