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“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.".

Desmond Tutu

To the Ravenna Festival

To the attention of the Artistic Direction Team:

Cristina Mazzavillani Muti, Franco Masotti, Angelo Nicastro, Antonio De Rosa

cc:      In charge for Administration and Secretariat Lilia Lorenzi

Fondazione Ravenna Manifestazioni

Subject: Performance of Batsheva Dance Company at Ravenna Festival 2016

Dear Artistic Direction Team of the Ravenna Festival,

In the first place we would like to congratulate and to express our deep appreciation for the choice to dedicate the 2016 edition of the Festival to Nelson Mandela, a shining example of humanity and abnegation in defense of human rights. However, we would like to recall that Mandela, besides of being the leader of the fight against the apartheid in South Africa, not accidentally was  also a courageous supporter of the rights of the Palestinians. We remember his statement: ''Our freedom will not be complete without the freedom of the Palestinians ''.

Exactly for this reason our appreciation turns into a mix of disappointment and bitterness in learning that the program of the Festival includes on the 6 July a performance of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company.

This dance company performs with the sponsorship of the Cultural Office of the Israeli Embassy and is financed by the Israeli Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs. Therefore Batsheva is directly tied to the Israeli government that continues to violate the human rights and the international law, imposing to millions of Palestinians a regime of military occupation and apartheid, and committing crimes against humanity with the indiscriminate killing and wounding of thousands of civilians, as in the repeated attacks to the besieged Gaza Strip[i].

Batsheva is a central figure of the marketing campaign called Brand Israel, launched in 2009 with the advice of US public relations experts. Brand Israel has the explicit goal of diverting the attention of the world public opinion from the continuing human rights' violations by the Israeli Government.[ii] The Israeli government finances cultural events abroad and supports the tour of artists who lend themselves to being a propaganda instrument, in the attempt to improve the image of the country in front of the international public opinion. Arye Mekel of the Israeli  Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2009 has clarified the objectives of Brand Israel: “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits. This way you show Israel's prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war".[iii] Already in 2005 Nissim Ben-Sheetrit of the Israeli Ministry of the Foreign Affairs stated: "We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture".[iv]

The collaboration of the Batsheva Dance Company with Israeli institutions and the acceptance of funding are objectively an act of complicity with the policies of oppression, discrimination and military occupation that deny the fundamental rights to Palestinian women and men.

Although the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company Ohad Naharin has criticized the abuses of Israel against the Palestinian, the demands to stop the collaboration with Brand Israel, to refuse funds from the Israeli government and to take a clear position against the violations of the rights of the Palestinian have not been listened up to now. Batsheva is continuing in its role of cultural ambassador of the Israeli apartheid.

Therefore there could not be a more clashing contrast with the dedication of the Ravenna Festival to Nelson Mandela. Many of the South African artists invited to perform at the Ravenna Festival had an important role in the fight against the apartheid in South Africa led by Nelson Mandela. It is unacceptable to see the name of Batsheva Dance Company, sponsored by a racist government that imposes a regime of occupation and apartheid to millions of people, together with the names of people who have fought against racism and apartheid in South Africa and supported the rights of the Palestinians.

Artistic and cultural events such as the Ravenna Festival are important occasions for presenting the best of music, dance and theatre, but there cannot be space for a use of culture as propaganda. The direct ties that Batsheva still maintains with the Israeli government make it impossible to describe the company as “non-political”. When artists put themselves at the service of people's oppression, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and accept the complicity with a decades-long military occupation, in spite of many UN resolutions, must be boycotted.

Inspired by the experience of the struggle against the apartheid in South Africa, more than 170 organizations of the Palestinian civil society have launched the movement for the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel[v] as an effective and nonviolent  means of struggle to support the resistance of the Palestinian people claiming the right of living in freedom in their own land. In this framework, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)[vi] strongly condemns  this instrumental and cynical use of culture and arts and the funding by the Israeli government of cultural events for propaganda purposes and call to the international community to boycott all cultural bodies that maintain institutional relationships with the Israeli government. We would like to point out that the campaign of cultural boycott against Israel, on the basis of the guidelines of PACBI, is not against the Israeli artists as such, but it is  targeting the Israeli institutions and the mechanisms through which the artists become instruments of the regime's propaganda.

The South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was with Mandela among the champions of the fight against the racist regime in South Africa, addressing those who declared themselves neutral regarding the conflict between the white minority  the black majority in that country, said: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor". Today Desmond Tutu, a strong supporter of BDS, restate the same arguments in relation to the situation in Palestine.

 We invite the organizers of the Ravenna Festival not to be neutral and therefore accomplices, but to public assume the political and intellectual responsibility that concerns to every subject operating in the sphere of the culture.

 Therefore we ask the organizers of the Ravenna Festival to withdraw the invitation to the Batsheva Dance Company and to break off the relations with the Embassy of Israel in Italy and the other Israeli institutions, also refusing any direct or indirect funding.

We remain at your disposal for further clarifications and are available to meet you in order to explain the reasons of our request.

Freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinians.

Sincerely yours,

BDS Italia