Sir, – Raymond Deane (August 15th) comments that Palestinian “civil society” supports a boycott of cultural events linked to the Israeli state. The Gaza Strip is ruled by sharia law and Palestinian women there have no rights, so I wonder what civil society is he referring to?
Did it not strike him as odd that during recent events no female doctors, nurses or hospital staff appeared and that all the women wore veils and none were allowed to speak?
Similarly, Brian Ó Éigeartaigh doesn’t the address the point that the Tricycle Theatre hosted the London Asian Film Festival and received funding from the Indian government, which has been found guilty of abusing human rights in Kashmir. It also takes money from the British government, which some argue is responsible for the deaths of thousands in Iraq – and indeed assert that a former prime minister should be chared with war crimes.
It is worth noting that the Tricycle’s own board and writers state that that war was “illegal”. Yet the Tricycle takes £720,000 in funding from the UK Arts Council; the Jewish Film Festival received £1,400 from the Israeli embassy. So we are now back to the point that if the Tricycle did not audit where the funding comes for from every single event it holds, and instead only picked out the Jewish Film Festival, then that is anti-Semitic.
You cannot claim to be on the side of human rights as Mr Deane does and have no opinion on sharia law. Nor can you justify a cultural boycott when only one event is single out despite other events receiving funding in the same way from sources that would fail the test applied to the Jewish Film Festival. – Yours, etc,
DESMOND FitzGERALD,
Canary Wharf,
London
Sir, – I was considering signing up Desmond FitzGerald (August 14th) to a group whose function would be to investigate how we might draw up a priority list of boycott campaigns.
He correctly identifies states who practise human rights abuses, and companies that exploit workers and those that avoid tax payments. But he let himself down just as I looked for his email address. He contends that if one refuses to accept dealings with the Israeli embassy over the slaughter in Gaza one must be anti-Semitic. This (deliberately?)confuses being Jewish with being the Israeli state. As the USA-based liberal Jewish Voice campaign makes clear, “Not in my name”. – Yours, etc,
CAHAL McLAUGHLIN,
Professor of Film Studies,
School of Creative
Arts,
Queen’s University,
Belfast BT7 1NN