(The word gauze is a solid weave structure for fabric manufacturing. It is derived from the place name Gaza, in Arabic: غزة ghazza, a center of weaving in Palestine.)
TO ARTISTS, CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD OF PERFORMING ARTS AND VISUAL ARTS IN THE NETHERLANDS
For almost three months, and ongoing, Israel has been openly committing genocidal war crimes upon Palestinians in Gaza and in the West -Bank, with the financial and military aid of Western states.
We are freelance performing artists and cultural workers across the Netherlands. Through this letter we express our outrage and deep concern witnessing the institutional silence during the on-going genocide happening in Gaza and the multiple war crimes and atrocities committed by the Israeli state, enabled by numerous Western nations. It is with equal despair, that we are witnessing a wide spread silencing and cancelling of singular artists and institutions by municipalities, governments, and a rising trend of mutual silencing across the cultural field, when speaking out against this genocide, or when showing open solidarity with Palestine.
With this call we address all cultural workers within the Dutch performing arts, including theater and dance sector, and the visual arts sector to sign this statement towards a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire. We find it essential to recognise that demanding an immediate ceasefire, lifting the siege of Gaza and at last and most importantly an end to the Occupation of Palestine are inextricably linked together.
We are calling for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate halt of military support by our governments in the ongoing slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West-Bank. We call upon all cultural institutions and artists that receive public funding and maintain an audience base and publicity to use their spaces, platforms and visibility to join our call towards a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire!
We call upon you, our colleagues and collaborating institutions, theatres, dance and performance art venues, to step together with us into the responsibility of positioning ourselves clearly and as a Common Gauze against the unfolding ethnic cleansing and the genocidal intentions of the Israeli government. With the Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we recognise that when we put value on body politics in the arts, we mean the value of ALL bodies. With a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we insist that we are feeling-sensing-thinking bodies and that witnessing the intense suffering of this genocide makes us connected through a shared ignited nervous system and conscience. With this Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we recognise that the suffering of Palestinians will not be in vain and that we will not stand for a present nor a future where bodies are annihilated at such scale and funded by our own governments. With a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we solidify a future where each body is valued, through common measures of dignity, safety, love and sovereignty. With a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we recognise that it is our responsibility as artists, who play an essential role in weaving intricately the cultural fabrics of our society, to resist and stand up against the wrongdoing of any peoples. This Common Gauze recognises that it is the bare minimum to demand for an Immediate Ceasefire! This Common Gauze urges us to see that the liberation of Palestine and Palestinian sovereignty over their land is the only way possible for Palestinians to enjoy basic human rights. This means the cessation of illegal settlements in the West -Bank, the fall of the wall dividing Palestine, terminating the humiliation at checkpoints and granting Palestinians expelled in ‘48 the right to return.
With this call we aim to ignite the understanding that it is our love, strength and dreams combined through which we can keep a future intact where ALL of us are held safely and in sovereignty. We urge you to stand firmly against the fear mongering of the Western mainstream propaganda and censorship. We repeat, with a Common Gauze we insist that we are bound together through our beating hearts, our long breath for solidarity and our common dreams of safe and sovereign futures. We refuse to be isolated and complicit through our fears, individualistic career calibrations and wilful silence! Our governments not only failed their duty to protect human rights, but are also actively supporting the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians through financial and military backing and parroting Israeli narrative of “right to self-defence”. Through this Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we show our governments that we will not be fooled by their propaganda, that we are not scared of their censorship and that we will not be silenced and made complicit with their war mongering ideologies. With a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire we urge you to join us by stepping into a shared responsibility as artists and cultural workers, to use our united voice to counteract the violence and extermination that is raging upon Palestinians.
COLLECTIVE COURAGE
To the institutions and artists in our communities that have so far chosen for silence in the face of a genocide unfolding:
This statement is not written with the purpose to beg you to awaken to the understanding that your apathy and your silence costs innocent lives everyday. We do not believe that anyone else except you yourself can activate you in resisting death-driven machinery. We address you, artists and collaborators, who have dedicated their lives to working alongside marginalised communities, who have stood up for justice, equal human rights, intersectionality and decolonisation, because we refuse cynicism and nihilism. Because we insist on the belief that this labor was not merely for advancement of individual careers and thus, we speak to that part of you. So we ask you the following questions: “What kind of future does your silence contribute to?” “What is holding you back from recognising the violence of the Occupation of Palestine?” “What is the fear that reduces you to inaction or apathy?” Despite its powerful lobbying, Israel is losing its stronghold over the narrative of this genocide. Our work as artists and cultural workers serves as a powerful tool for political and social transformation through for example providing space to discuss contexts. It is in these shared artistic spaces where we can express our critique and experiment with ways of resisting structural and institutional injustices, crimes and violences, such as imperialism, structural racism, fascism, antisemitism, islamophobia, colonisation, and climate injustice. All of these struggles are intricately linked together and cannot and must not be addressed in isolation!
We know that speaking up comes with risks. Perhaps you have been threatened or blackmailed by our governments and Zionist organisations, pressured to perform a certain political agenda. We want to remind you that you belong to this fight for liberation and that this fight does not come without risks. We know that only united our communal network can grow stronger and effectively counter the dictatorial tendencies of European institutional power, which is happening openly and widely across Europe.
We are calling especially Dutch and European passport holders to the forefront of this call. We urge you to awaken to the responsibility that comes with the privilege and protection of being a red passport holder. While in Saxony, Germany created a new legislation issuing visas only to people in support of Israel, it has become extremely necessary that European passport holders in the cultural field understand the importance of being outspoken and fearless in their resistance of fascist operations in arts and politics.
Finally we are adding here below useful sources for you to make an independent and well informed decision in joining this call towards a Common Gauze for an Immediate Ceasefire. And if you agree with this letter, we ask you to sign it and share it with your network.
Amsterdam, 11th of January
SITUATION AND CONTEXT
( You can find links in the end of the document for all information in CAPITALS.)
On the 29th December 2023, SOUTH AFRICA ISSUES A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE STATE OF ISRAEL at the International Court of Justice concerning alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The international federation for human rights, as of 12th of December 2023 has handed in an 8 PAGES LONG REPORT, efficiently diagnosing that the activities of the Israeli military and government are of genocidal intent and nature, alongside multiple listed war crimes.
However, already on April 17, 2021, such as February 1st, 2022 Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have summarised, analysed and reported Israeli governmental military activities on Palestinian land and against Palestinian civilians as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY OF APARTHEID AND PROSECUTION .
A PRESS RELEASE ON reliefweb.int reports that on the 9th of November 2023, three leading Palestinian rights organisation have called upon the ICC to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for genocide and incitement to genocide.
Since October 7th, 2023 and after the attack by Hamas, the Israeli government’s response has been a COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT OF CIVILIANS IN GAZA , a war crime, prohibited in national and international armed conflicts.
Since then the Israeli military activity has escalated to a genocide and an ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians in their home land, unfolding in front of our collective awareness.
Until now, an estimated 30,000 civilians have been killed, more than half of whom are children.
Following multiple sources and ongoing reports from journalists, survivors on the ground, media outlets, human rights investigation groups, genocide scholars and analysts amongst others, Israel has openly committed war crimes. ISRAEL HAS BEEN AND IS bombing hospitals, refugee camps and shelters, destroying vital infrastructure and blocking humanitarian aid to enter the besieged land strip. It purposefully targets journalists and innocent civilians by exposing the whole population to starvation through cutting off electricity, water and food supply. It is also using internationally prohibited weapons in Gaza like white phosphorus bombs.
ARTICLE 14 in the Universal declaration of human rights states that every human being has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in another country. This basic human right does not apply to Gazans. The civilians of Gaza are landlocked and are unable to flee the battle ground leaving them helplessly subjected to the Israeli terror bombings. We are intentionally using the term “terror” to describe the horrendous attacks on Palestinians by the Israeli government and military in this letter in order to challenge the notions of what terrorism looks like. It is our responsibility to challenge the notion of “terrorism” propagated by Israel and its Western Allies, especially as it is “the war on terrorism”, that is used as a propaganda to justify this genocide.
While many war crimes have been masked as “war against terrorism”, such as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, a stimulating read to reflect on “terrorism” may be found in an essay, written by Khaled A. Beydoun, published through HARVARD LAW REVIEW .
While Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers have OPENLY CALLED for the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, the Western governments that are backing Israel, through parroting its propaganda and providing it with crucial weaponry, are refusing to call a spade a spade.
Thus the ongoing Israeli attempt to annex Gaza and its people exposes how the international community not just fails to preserve basic human rights, but is also complicit in the ongoing atrocities through their silence, censorship and weapon supply to Israel. We find these developments extremely worrying and understand that the breaching of international human rights will have grave consequences for the future of the entire international community.
IN RESPONSE TO CENSORSHIP
ARTICLE 10.01 and 11 in the European Convention on human rights declares an undisturbed executing of one’s right to declare personal opinion publicly and preserves freedom such as multiplicity of speech. In the cultural field we are experiencing grave censorship performed by cultural institutions to silence our outcrying voices. Artists have lost their work in their attempt to voice out critique and concerns over what is unfolding in Palestine. Cultural institutions have been denied public funding, like in the case of OYOUN ART CENTRE, BERLIN .
We are witnessing a severe disabling of the international arts community, particularly in the U.S, Europe, Germany and U.K and these attacks by governmental bodies upon artists and cultural workers are disturbing.
THE BERLIN SENAT , one of the main funding bodies for freelance based artists in Berlin, has adjusted their application formula with an additional questionnaire where the applicants need to verify that they do not question the right of Israel to exist. This is deemed necessary to ensure “diversity” and exclude “anti semitism”. The definition of “anti semitism” is based upon the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
ALLIANCE
With this call we are continuing the ongoing efforts that have been already made within the cultural and educational landscape in the Netherlands such as abroad.
We understand ourselves in alliance to these voices. You therefore can find a list of existing petitions below that you may want to read and sign.
SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
As workers in the cultural domain we are aware that it is through our labor that we impact, transform and nourish the status quo, therefore we see it as our responsibility to be well informed and educated on the realities of oppression and oppressed peoples.
We urge every institution to join us in this labor, to shake off the paralysis of “the complexity of the situation”, avoid becoming complicit in the dehumanisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and educate fearlessly themselves and their public on the Occupation of Palestine. To help enlighten you, this document contains multiple sources that can inform you and help you to unpack the multiple historically documented layers of this occupation.
SOURCES LISTED AS MENTIONNED
icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/1...
reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territor...
hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israel...
amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/...
reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territor...
guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/colle...
hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/gaza-unlawful-israeli-hosp...
hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-wea...
cpj.org/2023/12/journalist-casualties-in-the-israe...
hrw.org/news/2023/10/12/israel-white-phosphorus-us...
un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-...
harvardlawreview.org/forum/no-volume/on-terrorists...
nytimes.com/2023/11/15/world/middleeast/israel-gaz...
fra.europa.eu/en/law-reference/european-convention...
exberliner.com/english-news-berlin/oyoun-cultural-...
berlin.de/en/news/8644688-5559700-new-clause-again...
LITERATURE AND INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
Rashid Khalidi: “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine”
Ilan Pappé: “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”
Norman Finkelstein: “Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom”
The Electronic Intifada: https://electronicintifada.net/
Dutch Scholars for Palestine did a great thorough job at compiling some beautiful and insightful resources, therefore we gladly send you forth to the following links:
Film: https://www.dutchscholarsforpalestine.nl/films
Books: https://www.dutchscholarsforpalestine.nl/books
OTHER STATEMENTS AND PETITIONS WITHIN THE DUTCH SCENE
Dutch Scholars for Palestine
https://www.dutchscholarsforpalestine.nl/
University of Utrecht
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvRdypBs9_Fs6nAp...
Amnesty NL
amnesty.nl/forms/spoedactie-gaza-staakt-vuren...
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
https://netherlands2palestine.wordpress.com/
Open letter to the Executive Board of the University of Utrecht