MPPM denounces the dark side of israeli cultural seduction

On the occasion of Batsheva Dance Company's visit to Portugal, MPPM calls attention to the true nature of its supporter, the State of Israel, founded on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and sustained by a policy of colonial occupation and apartheid.

Batsheva Dance Company - an Israeli dance company, based in Tel Aviv - will perform in Portugal in July, with shows at Rivoli, in Porto, and CCB, in Lisbon. The performances at CCB are integrated in the programme of the Almada Festival.

The Batsheva Dance Company is supported by the Israeli government, through the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and by the Municipality of Tel Aviv, which in the last seven years have contributed 38% of the company's revenue. The company resides in the Batsheva Centre which was built and renovated with support from the Tel Aviv Municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Culture through the Tel Aviv Foundation.

The Batsheva Dance Company conveys an image of culture, modernity and normality of the State of Israel, but it is essential to know the other side of reality.

A project of settlement colonialism and apartheid

The State of Israel was created in 1948 over the ruins of 500 Palestinian towns and villages, over the houses and lands of 750,000 Palestinian men, women and children forced into exile, over the bodies of 15,000 Palestinians killed in the war or in massacres perpetrated by Zionist militias.

Since then, the State of Israel has been developing a policy of settler colonialism aimed at occupying the whole of the Palestinian territory, while imposing, within the borders of 1949 and in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, a regime that international organisations have no hesitation in describing as apartheid.

Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people are widely documented, from the plundering of their natural resources to extrajudicial assassinations, from arbitrary arrests to settler violence, from the illegal blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip to the construction of a "wall of shame" running almost entirely through Palestinian territory.

Contrary to international law, but benefiting from the tolerance of its Western partners, Israel occupies East Jerusalem, almost all of the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights. The Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel, who make up 20% of the population, are effectively discriminated against by more than six dozen laws, however much the official propaganda would have you believe that its citizens are completely equal before the law.

A policy of erasing Palestinian cultural identity

Israel is developing a consistent policy of erasing Palestinian cultural identity.

According to Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, "Palestinian “symbols”, like the Palestinian flag, are systematically attacked and torn down, in public places, during public events, protests and even funerals, with the display of Palestinian national identity being de facto banned". The attack by Israeli forces on the coffin bearers of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, murdered by an Israeli army sniper because it was covered with her national flag, was in the news, but many other situations in which the occupier bans Palestinians from displaying their national symbols are less well known.

The destruction of the Moroccan quarter in Jerusalem's Old City at the beginning of the occupation to make way for the Wailing Wall esplanade is one of the first recorded cases of Palestinian sites destroyed or confiscated and converted into Israeli cultural sites shortly after June 1967, in what Albanese considers " part of a broader and deeper endeavour to ‘deconstruct and replace’ Palestine from the collective imagination through a combination of cultural appropriation and the erasure of key cultural entities."

The elimination of Palestinian history in East Jerusalem schools, the revocation of licenses granted to Palestinian schools that do not adhere to Israeli curriculum policies, and the conversion or closure of sites that represent Palestinian cultural, political and religious identity are " attempts to erase the Palestinian character of what is left of Palestinian ancestral land."

The Hebrew toponymy of many towns and villages that poorly disguises the original Arabic name, or the archaeological forgeries that seek to demonstrate a constant millennial presence in the occupied territory., fall within the "attacks on cultural objects of significance to eliminate all traces and expressions of Palestinian existence, and the incorporation of a revisionist view of history to assert (false) claims of sovereignty in the occupied Palestinian territory."

But the attempt to erase Palestinian culture is not always so discreet. In the early hours of 3 June, the Freedom Theatre, based in the Jenin refugee camp, was hit by a missile fired by Israeli aircraft. A child was wounded.

A necessary reflection

A vast operation is underway to strengthen Israel's presence in our country, through its embassy and with the active participation of numerous Portuguese entities, public and private, including municipalities, companies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself.

This is not the first time that the Almada Festival has brought an Israeli company to Portugal, contributing to the normalisation of the State of Israel, an attitude which is deeply regrettable, and which does not do justice to the values of freedom and respect for human rights which have historically marked that important cultural event.

At a time when the most racist and fanatical extreme right wing is in power in Israel, when hordes of settlers daily sow terror in villages and towns in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and when the Israeli army is conducting a major offensive - yet another - against the city and refugee camp of Jenin the MPPM warns that normalization of the State of Israel, as well as alignment, by action or omission, with its policy of apartheid and segregation constitute, objectively, an act of complicity with Israel's crimes.

8 July 2023

The National Directorate of MPPM