WE ASK THE RAVENNA FESTIVAL TO CANCEL THE SHOW OF THE ISRAELI DANCE COMPANY BATSHEVA SCHEDULED FOR THE 6 JULY.
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- Batsheva Dance Company, financed from the government of Israel, carries out a role of “cultural ambassador” of the occupation and the apartheid.
- The participation of Batsheva is in contrast with it dedication of the Festival to Nelson Mandela, defender of the Palestinian rights.
- BDS Italia, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycotting of Israel, BDS South Africa and Boycott From Within (Israel) have written to the Ravenna Festival in order to ask to withdraw the invitation to Batsheva.
- In the meeting with BDS Italia the Ravenna Festival has confirmed the intention to hold the Batsheva's show.
As BDS Italy [i] and other associations engaged in the defense of the human rights and supporting the right of the Palestinian people to freedom, justice and equality, we ask the Ravenna Festival to withdraw the invitation to the Israeli dance company of Batsheva, to cancel the show scheduled for the 6 July and to severe the relations with the Embassy of Israel in Italy and other Israeli institutions, not accepting any direct or indirect funding.
Batsheva 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. Batsheva is a central figure of the marketing campaign called Brand Israel, that has the explicit objective of presenting Israel like “normal country” and divert the attention of the public opinion world-wide from the continuous violations of human rights and international law by the Israeli government that imposes a regime of military occupation and apartheid to millions of Palestinians and is responsible of crimes against the humanity with the indiscriminate killing and wounding of thousands of civilians. The Israeli government promotes a propaganda use of culture and arts [ii]and Batsheva accepts a role of cultural ambassador of the Israeli apartheid.
The participation of Batsheva Dance Company to the Ravenna Festival is in clashing contrast with the dedication of the Festival to Nelson Mandela. 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 be incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians''. 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 name of those 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 or arts as propaganda. The direct ties with the Israeli government makes it impossible to describe Batsheva's role as “non-political”. The collaboration of Batsheva Dance Company with Israeli institutions and the acceptance of funding aimed at propaganda operations 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. When artists are complicit with the oppression of a people 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 launch in 2005 the movement for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel [iii] 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) [iv] calls to the international community to boycott all cultural bodies that maintain institutional relationships with the Israeli government. The campaign of cultural boycott against Israel, on the basis of the guidelines of PACBI [v], is not against the Israeli artists as such, but 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 and 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 publicly assume the political and intellectual responsibility that concerns to every subject operating in the sphere of the culture.
The demand for withdrawing the invitation to the Batsheva Dance Company has been already advanced in the past weeks to the Artistic Direction of the Ravenna Festival in the letter sent by BDS Italy [vi], PACBI [vii], BDS South Africa [viii] and by the Israeli activists of Boycott From Within [ix]. However, during a meeting with a delegation of BDS Italia the representatives of the Ravenna Festival, while recognizing the validity of our arguments, confirmed that it is not possible to cancel the Batsheva's performance.
Today we raise again with greater force our demand to the Ravenna Festival, announcing that in the event it does not find a positive response, we will find ourselves forced to took initiatives of protest against the participation of Batsheva Dance Company to the Festival, inviting the public to not attend the show of the 6 July.
Freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinians.
BDS Italia
[i] BDS Italia is a movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, composed of associations and groups in Italy that have joined the 2005 call of the Palestinian civil society and promote BDS campaigns and initiatives at national and local level (http://bdsitalia.org/)
[ii] Already in 2005 Nissim Ben-Sheetrit of the Israeli Ministry of the Foreign Affairs stated: "We see the culture as a hasbara (propaganda) tool of the first degree and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture" (http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/about-face-1.170267 )
[iii]http://bdsitalia.org/index.php/la-campagna-bds/77-appello-bds
[iv]http://pacbi.org/index.php
[v]http://bdsitalia.org/index.php/campagne/bac/1523-linee-guida-bc-luglio-2014
[vi] See BDS Italy letter
[vii] See PACBI letter
[viii] See BDS South Africa letter
[ix] See BFW letter