by Peter A. Belmont / 2012-03-08
© 2012 Peter Belmont

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Adalah-NY, the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, reports on March 7, 2012, that

Eighty New York human rights activists and cultural workers gathered tonight to protest Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company’s performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Batsheva was met with a similar protest in San Francisco on February 24, where activists explained Batsheva’s role in the Brand Israel campaign,

launched by the Israeli government as a way to “show Israel’s prettier face” and divert the international community’s attention from Israel’s egregious violations of Palestinian human rights. Two previous Batsheva tours were met with similar protests and boycott actions in 2010 and 2009, and other protests are expected to take place during their current tour.

BAM:

          WHAT BAM DID

BAM has (perhaps initially unwittingly) supported Israel’s human-rights deprivations in the occupied Palestinian territories by presenting a production of the Batsheva Dance Company, an unrepentant supporter of Israel’s illegal and human-rights-violative military occupation of Palestinian lands. See:

          http://mondoweiss.net/2012/03/ny-activists-protest-batsheva-dance-company-performance-in-brooklyn.html


          SHAME ON BAM

Shame on you for such political and cultural insensitivity.

Culture is NOT apolitical.

Your (indirect) support of Israel’s illegal practices of military (belligerent) occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967 constitutes (indirect) support of Israel’s 44 years of steadily-increasing illegalities and vicious human-rights deprivations.

          BAM can do better.

Perhaps BAM can host a discussion of the Israeli occupation as a way to draw all of its audiences into this important conversation, and make BAM part of the solution, rather than FREEZING THE CONVERSATION OUT by supporting Israel’s propaganda arm “Brand Israel” AND THEREBY MAKING ITSELF PART OF THE PROBLEM.

I have enjoyed many BAM productions and hope to do so in future. Please make me feel that I should do so in good conscience.

RSVP.

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