Maybe we should just go to the Isle of Wight and establish a Zionist colony,” I wrote to a friend recently, in mournful jest. “You mean a kibbutz?” she replied. Well, yes. I guess so.
My colony, or kibbutz, joke came from a stifling, depressing sense that the sliver of land on which Jews, especially Zionist Jews, can stand proudly and breathe easily is shrinking all the time. Actually, it’s less like standing now and more like standing on tiptoes on a teeny tiny sliver of land. And it’s less like breathing and more like taking gulps of breath when we can, and holding it in till near-explosion the rest of the time.
The sheer breadth and depth of the current pogrom is breathtaking, literally. Yet the pogrom is only expanding its reach, hunkering deeper down. From top to bottom, left to right, from police to Westminster to Whitehall to film to fashion and theatre and literary festivals, Israelis and “Zionists” are insulted, persecuted, subjected to hideous blood libel. Evidence is falsified, there are cover-ups, laws are bent, language is foul, terror-sympathisers win votes.
Spring and summer in the UK used to be defined by a parade of lovely festivals, from Hay on Wye to the Proms to Edinburgh. But are they for us any more? It pains me to say it but I don’t think they are.
Especially Edinburgh. I used to fantasise about going, to both the festival, for amazing classical performances, and to the Fringe, for theatre. Jews have always been important players in both; our achievements and creativity in the cultural sphere, from dance to comedy to classical music, hardly need rehearsing. The Fringe in particular has been a platform for British Jewish talent, from David Baddiel and Rachel Weiss to Matt Lucas and Ben Elton.
It was shocking, therefore, to note my own reaction to the thought of Edinburgh this summer: “No way. Not for us!” I dismissed it out of hand, reflexively. Which is how persistent campaigns of unopposed discrimination work. Before long, the victims are doing the perpetrator’s work for them – keeping out of the way, disenfranchising themselves, narrowing themselves down and taking up less space.
The truth is that Edinburgh’s August culture fests have been at it for years. Back in 2006, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) demanded that organisers of the International Film Festival in Edinburgh block Israeli films and artists entirely. The Edinburgh International Film Festival returned funding to the Israeli Embassy, originally intended to bring Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir to promote his documentary Five Days.
Two years later, the SPSC interrupted a performance of the Jerusalem Quartet during the International Festival yelling things like “End the siege of Gaza” and “Israeli army musicians”. Six were charged with racially aggravated conduct – charges were all dropped in 2010 by the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. (That they were charged in the first place is a sign of the times; that the charges were overturned was a sign of things to come.) In 2010, following shrill demands from Ken Loach and the SPSC, more money was rejected from the Embassy to allow the filmmaker, Tali Shalom-Ezer, to screen her movie Surrogate.
In 2012, Batsheva Dance Company’s opening night at the Edinburgh International Festival was disrupted four times by pro-Palestinian protesters, forcing the dancers to eventually stop. A mob outside was burning tickets and the Israeli cultural minister had to be escorted through a side entrance. Disruption to the same troupe happened again in 2013.
Two years later, 2014 was a turning point. An Israeli hip hop opera, called The City, was kicked out of its original venue because of threats from pro-Palestinian protesters. No help was forthcoming from Fringe organisers. They performed outside one night, with only instruments, not words, and found themselves surrounded. “We were there for the full show, an hour and 15 minutes, while they were cursing us and shouting for Palestine,” said the director Arik Eshet. Dancers from Ben-Gurion University due to perform then cancelled their show, not fancying being “cursed and called baby killers”.
Rather than defend the right of Israelis to perform, the Fringe capitulated. In 2015, no Israeli acts were allowed to perform. If Edinburgh was Israel-frei during the festival and Fringe, Jews gamely kept going back. And then came Reginald Hunter in last year’s Fringe, who compared Israel to an abusive partner. “My God, it’s like being married to Israel”. When two Israeli audience members in the front row said “not funny” they were yelled at for being “genocidal,” sworn at, told they were “not welcome,” slow-hand-clapped and jeered out of the gig. It was “the ugliest Fringe moment I’ve ever witnessed,” said Dominic Cavendish, the Telegraph’s reviewer.
Philip Simon had his show at the Banshee Labyrinth axed because his “views concerning the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine… are in significant conflict with our venue’s stance against the current Israeli government’s policy and actions.” His Jew-O-Rama compilation show was also cancelled. So was Rachel Creeger’s Ultimate Jewish Mother. Staff said they felt “unsafe.” Another issue: it was impossible for staff to keep up with the sheer volume of pro-Palestine graffiti in the loos.
What a litany. And this is only a fraction of what has gone on, and only at Edinburgh.
The thing is, we want so badly for things to be fine, to continue sharing our gifts and enjoying those of others, that we remain compliant, willing to look the other way and give it our best shot, until it’s no longer possible to do so. That moment has surely arrived.
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