As members of a collective of artists and activists founded to promote justice and equality for Palestinians, we cannot but agree with Adam Wells (Letters, 11 June) when he says that “bullying is ugly in all its forms”. It is a sentiment profoundly shared by artists such as Bashar Murkus, whose play A Parallel Time, examining the experience of political prisoners, was banished last week from the Israeli school curriculum by diktat of education minister Naftali Bennett. Funding for the Al-Midan theatre that staged it is under threat. Our own neighbourhood bully, former culture minister Sajid Javid, is on record assuring friends of Israel that British arts organisations supporting the Palestinian call for boycott could lose their funding.
Wells is fortunate to be able to hear and see what he wants without being “gagged”. Palestinians do not share that privilege. Israeli authorities prevent Palestinian artists and audiences from touring and travelling; cultural events are shut down; international artists are denied entry. Last month, Yemeni-Scottish film-maker Sara Ishaq was banned from entering for five years. In short, culture is avidly promoted by the state of Israel for those it approves, but denied or suppressed for those distasteful to it. Boycotting complicit institutions, as called for by Palestinian artists and civil society, is right and necessary
Farhana Sheikh, Hilary Westlake
Artists for Palestine UK
• I wonder what Adam Wells would have thought had he been with the Palestine Festival of Literature on our opening night at the Palestine National Theatre in Jerusalem in 2009, when our distinguished writers – including Michael Palin, Henning Mankell, Deborah Moggach and Claire Messud – as well as the organisers of the festival and the audience, were thrown out of the theatre and into the street by armed Israeli police (Report, 25 May 2009). No explanation or apology was ever given, but luckily our event was saved by the French cultural attaché and the British consul, whose compounds were nearby. Our visiting writers took away a vivid picture of what it is like to be a Palestinian.
Brigid Keenan, Ahdaf Soueif Chair, John Horner
Palestine Festival of Literature
• The case for a boycott is simple and powerful and nothing your pro-Israel correspondents have written invalidates it. Israel violates international law, specifically the fourth Geneva convention, and human rights on a daily basis. Since no government or international institution is prepared to act to enforce the law in the case of Israel, civil society has a responsibility to answer the Palestinian call for justice by a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to put pressure on Israel to end its criminal actions. That there are other criminal states in the world is irrelevant.
Leon Rosselson
London
