More than 50 artists voiced on Wednesday, 1 February 2023 their opposition to the Barbican Centre in London holding a concert in cooperation with the Israeli occupation embassy in the UK.
In a letter, artists, writers, and musicians requested the famed performance venue to end its arrangement with the apartheid Israeli embassy citing Israel’s policies against the Palestinians.
“Israel [is to] be held to account for its policies towards the Palestinian people – policies which are now widely recognised as fitting the United Nations’ definition of the crime against humanity of apartheid,” they said, citing reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other groups that documented decades-long Israeli abuses against Palestinian civilians.
Among the letter’s signatories were the actors Miriam Margolyes and Stephen Rea, the filmmakers’ Peter Kosminsky and Ken Loach, and the writers Ahdaf Soueif, China Mieville, Rachel Holmes, and Pauline Melville.
Tai Shani, the Turner Prize co-winner and the acclaimed poet Benjamin Zephaniah also signed the letter.
It’s worth noting that More than 3,000 Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporters in the UK have written to the Barbican leadership, urging them to cancel the event and pledge not to cooperate with Israel’s apartheid regime.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel says in its guidelines that any cultural body that fails to explicitly recognize Palestinians’ rights, or that whitewashes or justifies the Israeli violations of international law, is a legitimate target for boycotting.
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