{"id":2354,"date":"2015-05-17T16:48:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T06:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/?p=2354"},"modified":"2015-05-17T16:50:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T06:50:57","slug":"sydney-writers-festival-reject-partnerships-with-apartheid-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/?p=2354","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Writers’ Festival: Reject Partnerships with Apartheid Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to add your name to this petition.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

To the organisers of the Sydney Writers’ Festival:<\/p>\n

It has recently come to our attention that the festival has received support from the Israeli embassy for one of its panels<\/a>\u00a0(Assaf Gavron: The Wild West Bank). We have no objection to the author or his work, but rather to the institutional relationship that brings him to the festival.\u00a0Sustaining a partnership with the Israeli embassy at this time serves to normalise and legitimate Israel’s many violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.<\/p>\n

In 2008 an Israeli invitee to the festival\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered\u00a0funding for his visit to Sydney on the condition that he would “promote the policy interests of the State of Israel via culture and art, including contributing to creating a positive image for Israel.” Whether or not such contracts\u00a0are still in use\u00a0today, the purpose\u00a0of Israeli sponsorship\u00a0remains\u00a0the same: to use culture to whitewash Israel’s image abroad.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s festival theme<\/a>\u00a0asks the question \u201cHow to Live?\u201d We reply: by avoiding complicity with historical and ongoing injustices, with practices of occupation, colonialism, and apartheid.<\/p>\n

The people of Gaza are still struggling to recover from the bloody 51-day assault last year, which left over 2100 Palestinians \u2013 including around 500 children \u2013 dead, displaced a fourth of the population, and\u00a0involved numerous potential war crimes<\/a>. The world\u2019s silence towards this atrocity has only emboldened Israel\u2019s war camp: this month saw the election of an extreme right-wing government with ministers who have publicised calls for the genocide of the Palestinians<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While we in Sydney celebrate the pleasure of reading, Israel denies this same pleasure to the Palestinians. Along with schools and universities, the 2014 assault also destroyed two libraries<\/a>\u00a0in Gaza, and Israel\u2019s blockade of the Palestinian territories regularly prevents shipments of books from reaching readers. The occupation also restricts the ability of Palestinian writers to travel abroad to festivals such as yours.<\/p>\n

Since 2005, Palestinian civil society has called on people of conscience around the world<\/a>\u00a0to engage in a peaceful campaign of boycotting, divesting from, and sanctioning Israel in order to force it to comply with international law. The BDS movement has\u00a0grown exponentially\u00a0since then,\u00a0attracting support from a range of cultural and literary figures<\/a>\u00a0around the globe, including Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Cornell West, and John Pilger.<\/p>\n

We appeal to the organisers of the Sydney Writers’ Festival to withdraw\u00a0the current\u00a0sponsorship arrangement with the Israeli embassy, and henceforth to refrain from collaboration with it. This is not, we emphasise, a call to isolate or boycott individual Israeli authors, but to renounce business as usual with the organs of a state that routinely violates international law and basic human rights with impunity.<\/p>\n

As was the case in South Africa, where international solidarity played a crucial role in bringing down apartheid by boycotting the economic, sports and cultural institutions of the apartheid regime, we request that you not partner in any capacity with the Israeli government and other complicit institutions, until Israel fulfils its obligations under international law and recognises the Palestinian people\u2019s right to live in full equality and freedom in their homeland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click\u00a0here\u00a0to add your name to this petition.\u00a0 To the organisers of the Sydney Writers’ Festival: It has recently come to our attention that the festival has received support from the Israeli embassy for one of its panels\u00a0(Assaf Gavron: The Wild … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,17,12,6,15],"class_list":["post-2354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bds","tag-culturewashing","tag-dissent","tag-sydney-staff-for-bds","tag-sydney-writers-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2357,"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions\/2357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sydneystaff4bds.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}