Tell BAM: Drop Batsheva, Cultural Ambassadors for Genocide

On January 15, Dancers for Palestine, Theater Workers for a Ceasefire, and Amplify Palestine sent the following email to the President and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, requesting a response by January 31. BAM leadership did not respond. 

The signatory organizations and individuals join the call for BAM to respect the BDS picket line by refusing to program Batsheva. We recognize that it is as important as ever to escalate pressure for the support of Palestinian liberation, given ongoing violations of the ceasefire in Gaza, the escalating violence in the West Bank, and the continued military occupation and Apartheid system of discrimination.

We are New York City-based artists and cultural and social justice organizations and allies that support Palestinian human rights. We reject the use of art to normalize the atrocities Israel is perpetrating in Gaza – violence that has caused deep grief in our communities and that experts, scholars and human rights NGOs recognize as constituting genocide. In this time of crisis, we write to you because we greatly respect Brooklyn Academy of Music’s long history as a progressive arts institution and believe it is a grave mistake for you to program Batsheva Dance Company, which is scheduled to perform at the Howard Gilman Opera House March 6th-8th. 

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes Batsheva as “the best known global ambassador of Israeli culture.” The Company’s role as cultural ambassador reflects the State of Israel’s history of using the arts to launder its image and obfuscate its longstanding practices of apartheid, occupation, and dispossession of Palestinians from their homes and lands. This cynical attempt at “artwashing” further includes contractual obligations requiring artists presenting works internationally with funding from the Israeli state to represent the state and its policies positively.

No amount of artwashing can hide the unimaginable scale of suffering that the people of Gaza have been broadcasting to the world for well over a year. Israel’s indiscriminate destruction of infrastructure, including hospitals, has made it impossible to accurately count the dead, many of whom remain under the rubble. Palestinians who survive Israel’s aerial attacks are subjected to what Amnesty International has described as a “slow, calculated death” produced by Israeli-imposed starvation and disease.

Palestinian civil society, inspired by the historic global movement to boycott apartheid South Africa, has called on all people of conscience to use Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as a tool to end Israel’s impunity and pressure it to respect international law and Palestinian rights. Specifically, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which includes the absolute majority of Palestine-based dancers and dance institutions, has called for the boycott of events carried out “under the sponsorship of or in cooperation with an official Israeli body” as well as of cultural institutions, including dance companies, complicit in whitewashing or justifying Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights.

Multiple times, Batsheva Dance Company has been asked to publicly disavow its role as Israel’s cultural ambassador and publicly affirm a commitment to the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law. Multiple times, too, it has been asked to refuse to participate in the Israeli government’s artwashing efforts and to refuse the sponsorship of Israeli state institutions, including embassies, consulate generals, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its international shows. Such appeals have been met only with silence or dismissal.

Accordingly, we respectfully request that you cancel your upcoming engagement with Batsheva Dance Company. We would be happy to meet with you to further explain Batsheva’s complicity in Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights and the strong political message BAM is sending by programming the Company while Palestinians face an unprecedented, unthinkable scale of violence and the whole world bears witness to the first livestreamed genocide.

We truly hope BAM will join the massive wave of artists and cultural workers who are rising to meet the moral demands of this historic moment by taking a clear stance in support of Palestinian human rights. This past October, for example, saw the launch of the largest boycott of Israeli cultural institutions in history with over 7,000 writers and other literary workers now declaring that they will not work with complicit institutions. The boycott movement also includes a growing number of Israelis, such as prominent Israeli actor and director Itay Tiran, 28 American theater organizations, and a growing number of dance organizations, including Pageant, The Dance Union Podcast, and Parijata Performance Projects in NYC.