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Mock programs expose The Israel Ballet's role in whitewashing war crimes
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Protesters outside the performance. Photos on this page courtesy of Bud Korotzer.
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A year after Israel dispatched its internationally renowned Batsheva Dance Company to draw people's attention away from its slaughter of over 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza, The Israel Ballet was similarly dispatched in early 2010 on its first tour of the United States in 25 years. Activists across the country have been protesting the Israeli government-funded dance company under the banner "No Tutu Is Big Enough To Cover Israel’s War Crimes". As with the Batsheva tour, I worked on mock programs to be handed out to arriving audience members. Adalah-NY's press release follows.
Dancing, Singing New Yorkers protest, calling for boycott of Israel BalletBallet official says nothing existed in Israel before 1948, denies government funding despite ballet's own websiteAdalah-NY/Brooklyn, February 21, 2010 -- Forty-five human rights activists called upon fellow New Yorkers to boycott the Israel Ballet at its performance Sunday at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. Accompanied by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, protesters performed ballet, sang, chanted, and handed out mock programs to bring attention to the Israel Ballet's role in the Israeli state's use of the arts to whitewash its crimes against the Palestinian people. The demonstration was the third to take place along the Ballet company's U.S. tour in as many days.
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Protesters outside the performance.
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The mock programs being handed out to attendees.
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Hundreds of people entering the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts were handed mock programs that, when opened, described the connections between the Israel Ballet and Israeli apartheid. Outside of the venue, attendees could hear protesters chanting "Pas de deux or arabesque / The occupation is grotesque" and "A little tutu cannot hide / Your support for apartheid!" Dave Lippman of Adalah-NY commented, "We are here to let the Israel Ballet know that it cannot tip-toe around apartheid."
The Mock Programs
Protesting ballerinas dressed in blue and white tutus (Israel's national colors) and wearing masks performed a waltz that transformed into a military drill march. As the orchestra switched to a two-beat march, the dancers lifted their masks to reveal camouflage on their faces. Dancer Ayesha Hoda commented, "With this 'ResisDance,' we expose Israel's cynical use of the arts to mask facts about its occupation, racial discrimination and even war crimes against the Palestinian people, as revealed in the UN's recently published Goldstone Report on Israel's war of aggression on Gaza."
Organizers of the protest affirmed the boycott call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and stated that Israeli cultural and academic institutions that do not openly denounce Israeli crimes against Palestinians and dissociate themselves from Israeli policy should be subject to a popular boycott.
The Israel Ballet receives around $1 million annually from the Israeli government and proudly embraces its ties with the state. The Israel Ballet website states that the troupe is "earning recognition and bringing honor to the state of Israel." Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in turn, affirms the troupe's service to the state, calling them "a valued cultural representative."
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Protesters holding images of Israel's war against the Palestinians, with dancers.
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Protesters outside the performance.
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With growing criticism of Israeli state policies, arts and culture have become important weapons in the Israeli government's public relations campaign. In 2006, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched an initiative called "Brand Israel" to salvage Israel's deteriorating image abroad. Arye Mekel of Israel's Foreign Ministry has stated, "We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits... This way you show Israel's prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war."
Israeli news website Ynet reported that the Ballet was touring the United States "as part of an official state campaign." Ynet attributed Friday's protests in Burlington to Adalah in Israel, mistaking the Legal Center for Minority Rights with New York-based human rights activists Adalah-NY, neither of which organized the Burlington protest. Additional protests appear to be planned for the Ballet's Buffalo, New York and Rockville, Maryland performances.
The Ballet's Friday evening performance in Burlington, Vermont was interrupted by demonstrators (see video on right) who held signs proclaiming "No tutu is big enough to cover up war crimes." The next evening in Worcester, Massachusetts, over 30 protesters chanted and handed out mock programs.
Israel Ballet Associate Director Dan Rudolf came out to address the protesters and denied the existence of the Palestinian people: In response to the demonstrators' questions of what happened in 1948, Rudolf replied, "You know what was in Israel before 1948? Nothing. Nothing was." He also called anyone who claimed the Ballet received government funding a "liar," even though their own website lists The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport as well as The Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffo in their donors section. View a video of Dan Rudolf's statements here.
Following fifteen years of fruitless negotiations, supporters of a regime of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli institutions and businesses argue that only a moral campaign of non-violent public pressure like that used to topple Apartheid in South Africa will work to change Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
To combat Israel's denial of Palestinian rights, in 2004, Palestinian civil society, led by the newly formed Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), called on colleagues in the international community "to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions until Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid."
The call to boycott the Israel Ballet has been endorsed by Adalah-NY, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, and American Jews for a Just Peace.
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Full Text of the Mock Programs - Front & Back Pages
THE ISRAEL BALLET
"And so, to sum it all up, I perceive everything I say as absolutely true, and deficient in nothing whatever, and paint it all in my mind exactly as I want it to be."
--DON QUIXOTE, Volume 1, Chapter 25
The Israel Ballet is the only company in Israel performing the great classical and neo-classical ballets of the international repertoire.
The Israel Ballet has a rich and varied repertoire and in addition to George Balanchine's famous neo-classical works they also perform the great classical and modern full length ballets like "The Nutcracker", "The Sleeping Beauty", "Cinderella", "Onegin", "Romeo and Juliet", "Don Quixote" and "Giselle".
Today, The Israel Ballet is a company of dancers from all over the world, among them native Israelis, new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, guests who have been selected by audition, and Palestinians. The Israel Ballet's debut performance took place on 25 January 1967 in Rina Cinema in Holon, a city built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Tel Ar-Rish.
Since its establishment The Israel Ballet has performed at prominent festivals all over the world earning recognition and bringing honor to the State of Israel. This is especially useful considering Israel's recent decline in world opinion due to its ongoing policies of displacement and colonization.
In 1999, just a short time after the restoration of diplomatic relations with China, The Israel Ballet arrived in Beijing at the invitation of The Chinese Ministry of Culture. Four years later the company was invited for a second time to perform all over The People`s Republic. Both countries share not only cultural performances but also experience in the occupation and oppression of indigenous populations.
In the summer of 2004, thirty seven years after its foundation the company officially opened its own home in the center of Tel Aviv. The settling of Jewish Israelis in Tel Aviv was made possible by the Zionist movement's ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Muwanis, Sumayil, Jimasin Al-arabi, Al Manshiyya, Salameh, Abu Kbir, and Ar-Rashid.
To foster future audiences, the company presents special performances throughout Israel for students, young people and war criminals soldiers.
Full Text of the Mock Programs - Inside Pages
In late December 2008, Israel launched a massive military operation against the Gaza Strip, home to one-and-a-half million Palestinians. 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including 429 women and children. Just 16.7% of the total killed were combatants. Over 5,000 more Palestinians were injured, including many who lost limbs or are paralyzed, and 100,000 people were displaced from their homes. Gaza’s civilian infrastructure was heavily targeted in defiance of international law, and American-supplied M825A1 phosphorus shells were used against Palestinian civilians and a United Nations school. Amnesty International researchers who visited both Gaza and southern Israel during the fighting and in its immediate aftermath, found “compelling evidence of war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.” Hadas Ziv, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, stated that, “The military was well aware that such an attack on a densely populated area would exert a terrible toll on the civilian population.”
For more information: www.pacbi.org
THE ISRAEL BALLET: AMBASSADORS OF APARTHEID
Like Apartheid South Africa, Israel's legal system contains references to "Jews" and "Non Jews" that afford lesser rights to non-Jewish ethnic groups. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law bars Israelis who are married to Palestinians from the occupied territories from living with their spouses in Israel.
Apartheid is not just a system that existed in a single historical context but a crime under international law defined as any "institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."
Although Palestinians comprise over 20% of Israel's citizenry, not one of The Israel Ballet's dancers, board members or staff are Arabs -- as undeniably racist as Israel's renowned Batsheva Dance Company.
ISRAEL'S MANIPULATIVE CULTURAL FIG LEAVES
Arts and culture have become an important weapon in the Israeli government's public relations campaign, and in 2006, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched an initiative called "Brand Israel," to salvage Israel's deteriorating image abroad. Arye Mekel of Israel's Foreign Ministry has stated that, "We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits... This way you show Israel's prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war."
The Israel Ballet comes to the United States as part of the ongoing effort to "re-brand" Israel's image in the West as an enlightened center of arts and technology, to conceal the facts about its occupation, racial discrimination and grave violations of international law and fundamental Palestinian rights. The Israel Ballet receives around $1 million annually from the Israeli government.
Rather than distancing itself from the Israeli state's cynical use of the arts to whitewash its apartheid and colonial policies, the Israel Ballet has embraced its ties with the state and proudly proclaims on its website that it is "earning recognition and bringing honor to the state of Israel." Israel's Foreign Ministry lauds the troupe's service to the state as "a valued cultural representative."
Rather than denouncing the Israeli army's commission of well-documented human rights violations against Palestinians, the Israel Ballet solicits funds for "special performances" for Israeli soldiers, makes use of a special army program to keep an active duty soldier as an intern, and performs an encore to the tunes of the Israeli army band--saluting "with a smile the achievements of the state, Zionism and the art of classical ballet."
In the press, the Israel Ballet actively obfuscates Israel's regime of racial discrimination and segregation and shows complete disregard for Palestinian suffering. In late January, 2009, as Palestinians reeled from Israel's assault on Gaza, The Israel Ballet's founder Berta Yampolsky told TimeOut Beijing, "Luckily, right now we don't have to worry about war: despite our problems, this is a safe place; there's no crime, and you don't have to be afraid at night."
Related Links
Hacking Batsheva: Cultural Boycott In The Face Of Genocide, Nigel Parry (May 22nd, 2009)
Photos of the Brooklyn protest on Adalah's website
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