After being blocked for over three hours at the "checkpoint" in Piazza di Pietra in Rome by Italian "law enforcement", denied the freedom of movement and expression, the attivists held their ground and attained their inalienable right to communicate, to demand the freedom of the Palestinian people, arriving at Palazzo Cipolla where the Banksy exhibition was on display.
WAR, CAPITALISM & LIBERTY from Banksy to Us
An exhibition for the Cultural Boycott of Israel
We present the vile WAR perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people.
We present the CAPITALISM that drowns out the protest movements against Israeli oppression and corrupts the hearts of those who allow themselves to become complicit.
We present the FREEDOM that we demand for all Palestinians who are deprived of this basic right.
Just like Banksy, whose works created in the Palestinian territories communicate thoughts and messages of struggle that the mainstream media refuse to show, corrupted by system that ties them to Israel’s self-promotion, we also want to rise above the barriers of capitalist opportunism, to show our opposition to Israeli Apartheid and highlight its political contradictions.
On the one hand, Israel commits daily injustices and crimes against Palestinians, who are struggling against the occupation, by restricting freedoms of expression and culture, by killing and imprisoning, including through the illegal practice of administrative detention (without charges or trial, renewable indefinitely at the discretion of a military judge).
Israel arrests journalists, teachers, students, knowledge and cultural workers, such as Mohammed Abu Sakha, Palestinian clown of the Ramallah circus school, arrested in December 2015 and held without charge or trial for six months. His detention was just extended for another six months. (There are over 7000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons, including 400 minors, with more than 1,000 in administrative detention)
On the other, Israel promotes a liberal and wholesome image of the country, through Brand Israel, a propaganda campaign launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2009, which operates through direct and indirect financing of artists, ensembles, artistic and cultural projects willing to remain silent on the continuing human rights and international law violations by their government.
For example the dance company Batsheva, sponsored by the Israeli government as an ambassador of culture that was invited by the Ravenna Festival, dedicated this year to Nelson Mandela, in striking contrast with a man who was always fought against apartheid and supported the Palestinian cause. In his own words: ''our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
What is the true face of Israel? A philanthropic supporter of culture? Or that abomination of indiscriminate repression of all freedom and cultural expression? ... And what if it were to happen here? What dignity does a society have when it represses, contains, limits, kills and arrests teachers, students, artists, journalists, scientists, researchers, knowledge and cultural workers?
We demand the immediate release of Mohammed Abu Sakha and all Palestinian political prisoners. We urge everyone to join the Palestinian campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it respects Palestinian rights and international law.
BDS Rome | Metropolitan Laboratory of Independent Culture
Activists standing with the Palestinian resistance
"If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, we side with the powerful, we don’t remain neutral"– Graffiti by Banksy in Gaza