Human Rights

September 14, 2012December 11, 2020

Israel’s Cultural Hasbara Exports

Music industry figure in Israel, Jeremy Hulsh of Oleh! Records, is encouraging the Israeli government to invest in up-and-coming musicians as soft sell ambassadors for state propaganda. From Oleh! Records’ business plan, the company has a broad interest in utilising culture as hasbara:

contributing to the overall Government’s desired long term outcome for the areas of Culture, Economic Development, Regional Cooperation, Public Diplomacy (branding), and Diaspora Relations – ‘A right to culture’ the right to create a culture and the right to consume culture’ as laid out particularly by the Ministry of Culture and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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Defining Israeli industry “characterized by groundbreaking entrepreneurship, Israel yields pioneering technologies, profitable business opportunities and high investment returns” – as claimed by the Ministry of Trade & Labor. Likewise- the explicit national agenda to “make it possible for every Israeli to participate in improving Israel’s image in the world, and thereby contribute to its political and economic strength as well as its international standing.” – as promoted by the Ministry of Public Diplomacy.
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While Israeli music industry and culture professionals have long been aware that independent musicians and Israeli music sector-at large make significant contributions not only to local culture and the economy, Israeli music culture significantly improves relations with the Diaspora community and foreign populations as a measure of soft power.

Oleh! presently obtains funding from “philanthropic support outside the State of Israel including Australia and United States based foundations” and envisages that “Israeli Music will benefit from a synchronized brand identity which must be coordinated and marketed by a non governmental Israeli body with an apolitical association“.

In 2005, Nissim Ben-Sheetrit of Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated: “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.”

Concrete examples of Israel’s cultural hard sell hasbara include the sites Size Doesn’t Matter and the Creative Community for Peace, where quotations are collected opportunistically of artists who have flaunted the cultural boycott called by Palestinians.

This new story in The Jewish Week highlights potential for Israel’s cultural music-washing exports:

Overcoming Israel’s unflattering image in the international media — especially in Europe — is another challenge. Malcolm Haynes, a music programmer for the U.K’s Glastonbury Festival, said he came to Israel to learn about the music scene and a little bit about the politics.

While Israel remains an obscure music scene, booking Israeli acts runs the risk of triggering boycotts, he said. Despite that, Haynes said he had been impressed by the musicians at the conference, and expected some might get invitations to play at Glastonberry. “I’m about building bridges.”

Despite the potential for boycott, Oleh Record’s Hulsh says that Israel’s government should invest more in helping fledgling artists reach concerts abroad as a way to boosting Israel’s image in an organic way rather than with heavy-handed propaganda.

“Each of them is an authentic cultural ambassador,” he said. “When they get on stage and tell their story, they change a narrative.”

All Israelis performing abroad who obtain Israeli government funding to do so are required to sign a contract which converts them into a marketing emissary for apartheid:

“The service provider undertakes to act faithfully, responsibly and tirelessly to provide the Ministry with the highest professional services. The service provider is aware that the purpose of ordering services from him is to promote the policy interests of the State of Israel via culture and art, including contributing to creating a positive image for Israel.”

No promotion of the state, no funding. Who can trust the stage ‘narrative’ of artists beholden to an apartheid government for favours?

Music cannot cross apartheid walls and it is an obscenity to pretend otherwise when oppressed Palestinians have requested global solidarity for boycott, divestment and sanctions in order to obtain their just rights.

Say no to musicwashing Israel’s continuing oppression of Indigenous Palestinian people and refuse to entertain musical hasbara agents who are complicit with apartheid. Palestinians do not have a massive, well-funded state apparatus to broadcast their plight, and they deserve support from conscientious people around the world. Boycott!

The latest target of the Tourism Ministry is the foodie world, specifically food bloggers, who are brought on paid trips to Israel where their senses are dulled by stolen hummus and they go home and gush appropriately about what they have seen. Indeed, “David Lebovitz, an American writer and pastry chef living in Paris whose food-centric personal website receives nearly 2 million unique visitors per month, wrote seven posts about the trip, all of which presented Israel (and its cuisine ) in a positive light.” How’jya like them apples BDSers?

Brand Israel – Palestine activists picket Israeli film fest:

In 2009, then spokesperson of Israel’s Foreign Ministry Arye Mekel said the initiative to “re-brand” Israel involved sending “well-known novelists and writers overseas, theatre companies, exhibits … [to] show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

Likewise, current deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has said: “Branding Israel is a way to bring who we are, without the prisms of political agendas, to the masses.”

Syncretism of food culture and freebie hasbara trips for food bloggers to pad out Brand Apartheid Israel

BDS: Growing out of the fringe
Why a boycott of Israeli academics is fully justified
New Al Haq report says governments within their rights to sanction Israel over settlement enterprise

Protesting the Batsheva Brand Israel dance export in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Rebranding Israel: History out, creativity and innovation in

“We understood that it wasn’t enough to say we have creative energy – we actually had to be that way,” says Friedman. “This is the essence of Israelihood – everyone does what they want to do. It’s not refined, but dynamic and varied.”

Natanzon says that the Foreign Ministry considered adopting the values from the “Start-Up Nation” book, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, when branding Israel.

“But we didn’t want to do that,” he says. “It would only reference one sector of the population, and exclude the others. We wanted to take it to the next level, to showcase the variety and creativity there is throughout the whole country.”

Out: Jewish heritage

It’s impossible not to notice that the new branding excludes central characteristics associated with Israel, such as Jewish culture and heritage and the country’s holy sites – all of which appear in countless official adverts.

“The branding looks at something broader,” Natanzon explains. “The aim was to create a new range of conversations for the country’s brand. The historical components are already part and parcel of its image.”

September 10, 2012December 11, 2020

London Protests for Palestinian Hunger Strikers

Report from Yael Kahn, on the London protest to support Palestinian hunger strikers, Samer Al-Barq and Hassan Safadi, who are engaged in the longest hunger strikes in history. These courageous people are highlighting Israel’s Kafkesque abuse of Palestinian prisoners, who are detained without charge or trial:

‘London protest: The tens of thousands of people walking between Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square, many of whom were involved in the final day of the Paralympics, in central London could not miss the large banners and around 40 protesters demanding the immediate release of the hunger strikers.

Amazing support for the Palestinians in general and to the hunger strikers in particular among the public, many of whom were involved in the Paralympics at Trafalgar Square. We leafleted and engaged with well over 1,000 people, with many more thousands reading our messages pinned to our clothes and posters.

Clearly among the general public and the tourists in London the support for the Palestinians is tremendous.
Even an Israeli who was sent to join the Olympics agreed the conditions of the prisoners and their incarceration without charge were unacceptable.

Another passerby got involved because his teenage daughters were very interested. He was surprised and extremely pleased to find out that the Muslims and Jews at the protest had the same aim to support the hunger strikers.

It really feels that at last people are coming together in response to the plight of the hunger strikers.’

Israel has failed to honour its previous agreements in regard to Palestinian detainees. In the light of this, Addameer, Al-Haq and PHR-IL urge the international community to immediately intervene on their behalf and demand:

That the agreements reached on 14 and 15 May 2012 be respected, including the release of administrative detainees who were promised release at the end of their current orders;

Unrestricted access for independent physicians to all hunger strikers;

The immediate transfer of Samer Al-Barq and Hassan Safadi, as well as all other hunger strikers, to public hospitals;

That no hunger striker be shackled while hospitalized;

That all hunger strikers be allowed family visits, while they are still lucid;

That Hassan Safadi and Samer Al-Barq, along with all other administrative detainees, in addition to Ayman Sharawna and other detainees that were released as part of the prisoner exchange deal in October 2011 be immediately and unconditionally released.

September 10, 2012December 11, 2020

On Co-Resistance: Sahar Vardi and MIcha Kurz in Australia

Israeli activists, Sahar Vardi and MIcha Kurz recently completed a speaking tour of Australia. Sahar and Micha are among a growing number of young Israelis who are taking an active stand against their government’s occupation and policies of oppression against the Palestinian people.

Packed meeting to hear Vardi and Kurz
Some notes:

Kurz on Israeli politicians: ‘They are not interested in a peace resolution’.

Kurz: ‘Making up 40% of the population, Palestinian Jerusalemites are not allowed to vote’.

Vardi: ‘There’s a huge bigger picture there which has to do with foreign investment and who makes a profit out of this at the end of the line – definitely not Palestinians, but not necessarily Israeli citizens either. Israel’s biggest import today is arms, military technology – Israel can sell this stuff because it can prove it works. Israel builds the wall and they have the security systems set up, then when the US wants to build a wall between Mexico and the US it uses Israeli technology because it knows it works.’
Micha speaking
Kurz: ‘We saw G4S stickers all round Melbourne today. G4S runs the largest prison camp in the occupied territories … runs the largest private military in the world. They are active in other areas of urban warfare, in western cities everywhere. The question always has to be who is making a profit … that keeps it away from fear or anything to do with antisemitism or security, it has everything to do with global profit. What inspires me about the BDS movement is it has managed to suggest a grassroots movement where politicians have failed and has united people from the grassroots up … it’s something Israelis can support. I support the BDS movement.’

Kurz: ‘We work for justice and human rights … When I hear ‘peace’ I hear agreement between two equal parties. There are no two equal parties here. There is an Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.’

Kurz: ‘I’ve given up on politicians. What it comes down to is strategically building a grassroots movements, both global and local. The global movement is growing and succeeding despite the mass media – we know not to trust them anyway. I’ve witnessed firsthand how things are succeeding.’

September 5, 2012December 11, 2020

Congratulations to the Student Representative Council of the University of the Witwatersrand

WITS SRC Resolution Don’t Play Apartheid Israel [DPAI] would like to extend our warmest congratulations to the Student Representative Council [SRC] of the University of the Witwatersrand on its unanimous principled resolution to support boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel. This is an immense breakthrough which will immeasurably strengthen the global boycott of apartheid Israel. The resolution states that the University will “not participate in any form of cultural or academic collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions and will not provide support to Israeli cultural or academic institutions”.

We recognise that the SRC may come under significant pressure for its embrace of the Palestinian call for BDS, and wish to extend our support in firm solidarity. We look toward the day when Palestinian people have attained their just rights and freedom.

In solidarity,

Don’t Play Apartheid [DPAI]

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel (DPAI) is a group of over 900 members which seeks to inform musicians of the Palestinian call to boycott Israel, and the extent to which their decision to play in the apartheid state will be instrumentalized – against their will – as propaganda for the maintenance of a horrifying status quo in Israel/Palestine: that is a brutal, decades-long occupation, ongoing ethnic cleansing, continual land theft, passing of over 20 racist laws within Israel/’48, and the crackdown on human rights groups. We represent over 900 members from around the globe who believe that it is essential for musicians & other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel.

South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) Student Representative Council (SRC) unanimously adopted a full academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

September 4, 2012December 11, 2020

Jerusalem Development Authority Implicated in Boycotted Film Funding

In the vein of its previous documentary project presenting a montage of 24 hours of life in Berlin, the German Zero One film production company has been planning a similar venture on Jerusalem.

Berlin-based Zero One Film will work alongside Palestinian producer Daoud Kuttab and newly founded Israeli prodco 24 Communications. The latter is a joint venture between Israeli prodcos Pie Films and Inosan, which worked on the original version of HBO hit In Treatment.

Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and Jerusalem Film Fund are backing 24h Jerusalem and the producers hope to secure the remaining €400,000 (US$500,000) of its €2.4m budget at MipTV this week.

Palestinian directors have now pulled out of the project – they were unaware of the presence of the Israeli production company, nor of backing from the Jerusalem Film Fund, which is in turn funded by the Jerusalem Development Authority. Current activities of the JDA include expropriating Palestinian land in East Jerusalem for parks. The JDA received “40 million NIS in 2005 to develop green spaces around the Old City of Jerusalem”.

Designating urban space as a national park is not only easier but cheaper too, the state having no obligation to compensate owners.

The Jerusalem municipality leaves the creation of these parks to the National Planning Authority (in the Ministry of Interior), Bimkom noted, which deals more with the protection of nature and heritage than the rights of Jerusalem’s residents.
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The disparity between the management of space for West Jerusalemites compared to their counterparts in the east is stark, with national parks notably absent from the west.

“The Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are crowded and they suffer from extreme neglect and shortage of public infrastructure,” Bimkom architect, Efrat Bar-Cohen, said in a statement.

“The residents are in desperate need of space by which they can improve their quality of life, even if slightly.”

The building of the park will have ramifications beyond the strangling of Issawiya and A-Tur residents.

It will stretch into the E1 area of the West Bank, which represents an important reserve of space for Palestinian development, creating a string of Jewish Israeli-only settlement between the Old City and Ma’ale Adumim settlement.

Elad Kandl is director of the Old City projects at the Jerusalem Development Authority, whose website describes their work as rehabilitating and conserving the Old City.

He expressed succinctly Israel’s aim of curbing Palestinian development in Jerusalem. “When you make it a national park,” he told The Jerusalem Post in reference to open space, “you keep the status quo.”

The JDA, which operates under the 1988 Jerusalem Development Authority Law, was established to further entrench Israeli control over the city and is also involved in the Jerusalem light rail project.

Indeed, the Prime Minister’s Office and the mayor of Jerusalem sponsored a JDA program to work toward this goal. On its website the JDA is very clear about the role of the Jerusalem light rail project, stating that “The investment in the light railway project was one of the government’s key strategies to empower Jerusalem as a capital.”

The JDA is also an instrumental actor in the proposed construction of 1,400 new housing units in the Gilo Jewish settlement colony, located near Bethlehem in occupied East Jerusalem.

In this light, the involvement of the JDA in the 24h Jerusalem project clearly designates the film as unacceptable normalisation with the Israeli occupation.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has defined normalization specifically in a Palestinian and Arab context “as the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.” [2] This is the definition endorsed by the BDS National Committee (BNC).

One Palestinian participant in the 24h Jerusalem project, Enas aL-Muthaffar, made clear his objections to the film project in an open letter on August 25th. He reveals that he was not informed at all about the Israeli production partner. Nor were the Palestinian directors to be involved in the editing process.

To whom It May Concern,

When Kuttab Productions first contacted me early July, it failed to mention that Israel is part of this project, although I specifically inquired about this issue. And then again, you sent me an email on July 9th, which also failed to mention that Israel is in fact part of your film production. I only knew about Israel being a co-producer of Jerusalem 24 when I asked specific technical questions about the characters, crew and the editing phase. I was surprised to know that the selected filmmakers are only requested to film on September 6th and that we have no say in the editing phase. Then, you said: The editing phase will happen in Germany where the Palestinian and the Israeli films will be edited in one feature length documentary. This is not information that can simply be passed on in such a way!

I reject to be part of Jerusalem 24: a German/ Israeli/ Palestinian co-production for the following two main reasons:

· I respect and support Palestinian civil society campaign for Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with International law and respects Palestinian rights.

· I refuse to be part of a peace propaganda machine that continues to ignore Israel’s cruel colonization of Palestine.

There is a longer list of reasons related to the current steps undertaken by Israel that aim at changing the demographic, social and cultural composition of the city of Jerusalem – to name few:

· Advocating the largest act of de-population of East Jerusalem since 1967.

· Continuing expansion of illegal settlements.

· Renewal of closure of East Jerusalem Institutions.

· Building restrictions and home demolitions.

· Revoking residency rights and denying family reunification.

· Continued illegal diggings under al-Aqsa mosque compound.

There is no way in which I can separate my art from who I am, from my life, from my duty to resist everything and anything that doesn’t acknowledge my right to exist on my land in freedom and dignity.

Regards,

Enas I. aL-Muthaffar

Enas’ stance is confirmed in an Al Akhbar piece [Google translation]:

Yesterday, I sent a group of Palestinian institutions and individuals working in the field of culture and art message to «Book of production» declare the absolute rejection of various forms of normalization with the occupier and «standing in the face of attempts to penetrate the cultural front as the line of the clash with the basic occupation, and intellectuals were and will remain the spearhead in the clash of cultures and civilizations with brute occupation force.

Haidar Eid further affirms terms of the PACBI boycott relevant to the joint film project [Google translation]:

That all meetings and projects that combine between the Palestinians and the Israelis must be placed in the proper context against the occupation and other forms of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and most importantly that these meetings be pro-boycott by directives issued by the National Committee of the province.

According to Amira Hass, 20 directors, including Israelis, have now pulled out of the film project in support of the cultural boycott and filming, scheduled for September 6, has been halted.