Why I am not boycotting Israel

A wounded boy in Ramallah

So - Netanyahu has been re-elected.  It is truly extraordinary, and terrifying, that a democratic process should lead to victory for a leader who was responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians, of whom over 500 were children, in Gaza last summer; a leader who has categorically rejected any possibility of self-determination for the Palestinian people; a leader who seems determined to agitate for war with Iran.  There is something rotten in the state of Israel.  It comes as no surprise to me that many of my distinguished colleagues in the field of art and culture, including personal friends and artists whom I admire very deeply, have chosen to signal their boycott of the country.

I was asked to sign this pledge.  I thought about it very hard: agonised, actually.  And, in the end, I decided not to.  It was a very difficult decision - not least because so many people expected me to do it.  After all, our most recent production, This Flesh is Mine, was presented jointly with a Palestinian company, Ashtar, and we made no secret of our political position.  We rehearsed the play in Ramallah, where we saw at first hand the indignities heaped upon the Palestinian people.  We shared the horror of the oppressed when Mohammed Alazzeh, the teenage brother of one of our actors, Razan Alazzeh, was shot by the Israeli military.  Surely, of all British artists, I should be the one to pledge my cultural boycott of the oppressor?

But people's expectations of your political position cannot in themselves dictate that position.  As Kazuo Ishiguro recently said:  "We’re well-meaning, but most of us are just being swept along. We’re not sitting down and really examining why we’re taking certain stances. We belong to certain tribes, and there’s always the correct slogan and position on every issue for our little tribe." Uncomfortably, on this issue, I find myself out of step with my tribe.

This is not to say that I don't, in some ways, boycott Israel already.  I avoid buying Israeli goods - in fact,  I've got that down to a bit of an art.  Barcodes often give away products that otherwise hide their Israeli origin: it used to be 729, then, in an attempt to circumvent the boycott, it was changed to 871.  I actively seek out Palestinian goods: the olive oil is superb.  It is part of the little I can do to boost the Palestinian economy and to undermine the aggressors'.

I do not, however, regard a cultural boycott as a logical continuation of an economic one.  To do so is to reduce culture to another commodity - and there's far too much of that going on already.  Culture is not the same as olive oil.  Indeed, it would be my contention that culture is one of the few human activities that might actually do some good in this appalling situation, and that for artists to withdraw their services in this way denies the value of who they are and what they do.  Art, theatre, performance - these things are about the generation of empathy.  They allow us to see the world from somebody else's point of view.  They generate a sense of common humanity.  In a place where a regime's propaganda systematically de-humanises those that it oppresses, there can be nothing more precious than this.  If moderate Israelis - those who are critical of Netanyahu and his hawkish retinue - can be supported by the words, the presence and the emotional force of international artists and particularly Arab artists, will this not be of value in overturning the lies on which the regime is built?

My tribe - the moral, principled people who signed the pledge - often cite the downfall of apartheid as evidence that cultural boycotts do have some efficacy.  Personally, I rather doubt that the refusal of certain performers to play Sun City was really instrumental in that process.  What brought about change in South Africa was partly the sense that, with the fall of the Soviet bloc, the apartheid regime no longer stood as a bulwark against the perceived advance of communism in Africa; and partly an awareness of the regime's moral bankruptcy, engendered by vociferous opposition both within the country and internationally.  You could, of course, argue that the boycott was an important part of the latter - but my assertion would be that the really important role played by culture was in fact an active one, rather than passive withdrawal.  The work of politically engaged artists like Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Nadine Gordimer, Maishe Maponya, Gina Mhlophe, Barney Simon, Eugene Skeef, was hugely important to the raising of understanding and awareness across the country and internationally.  It did this because it operated across the racial divide, and in itself demonstrated the potential for a different political model.  It told the world about apartheid, yes - but it also did so much more.  It helped to imagine a world beyond that tarnished present, to dream a common future for a divided and disoriented humanity.

So my contention would be that we need more cultural engagement with Israel, not less.  We need them to hear our voices, the voices of the Palestinians they oppress, the voices of the Iranians they threaten.  If they hear those voices rich in warmth and humour, in grief and pain, in sorrow and in anger, through theatre and poetry, painting, song and dance - then they will hear the call of our common humanity.  This is, of course, a statement of faith; but if I did not have faith in art and humanity, then I would not be an artist.  That is why I cannot renounce this belief in the power of art to effect real change.  I shall never renounce it.  Even if that leaves me separated from my tribe.  My friends.

It has been wisely said that "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends.  You talk to your enemies."  And do you know who said it?  Moshe Dayan.

The matter of Visas

Edward Muallem and Razan Alazzeh recording a scene for This Flesh is Mine

Now that a week has passed since the last performance of This Flesh is Mine (last for now, I should probably say), I feel I can finally talk a bit in public about the fact that two of our Palestinian colleagues, Razan Alazzeh and Emile André, didn't make it to London.  If you came to the show and got a programme, you will have seen that their roles were taken, at the last minute, by two very proficient Arabic actors based in London, Jumaan Short and Tariq Jordan.  Somehow we managed to find them within 24 hours of our return to London from Ramallah - so they had a week to work on the play before it went in front of a London audience.  That happened also to be the week when we were doing technical and dress rehearsals - but it is actually possible for an actor to step in to a production at that stage, because the production itself is already very formed, so they can work everything out much more quickly from all that is going on around them.  I was lucky that the two actors hardly every coincided on stage - so they could respond to other performers who had already worked for a month. All of which meant that Razan and Emile continued, in a way, to be very present in the piece.  Jumaan and Tariq did not give the same performances - far from it - but the ghosts of those performances, and the experience that those Palestinian actors brought to the roles, informed every moment of the play.

What had happened was that their visa applications had been rejected - we found out the morning after our wonderful preview performances in Ramallah, the day before we were due to fly home.  It wasn't a case of direct political interference to prevent Palestinian performers coming to London - though that wouldn't have surprised me in a climate where the ENO was unable to bring Abbas Kiarostami from Iran, and the Lebanese authorities have recently confiscated the passport of Lucien Bourjeily to stop him participating in LIFT.  Nevertheless, it was political, in way that is more subtle and so all the more insidious.

Put simply, the forms weren't filled in correctly.  The Ashtar administrators sent a supporting letter from us, inviting the performers to appear in the play, and ticked the box saying "tourist visa".  They should, of course, have ticked "business".  Why didn't they?  Well - Ashtar previously came to London in 2012, to present Richard II as part of the Globe to Globe Festival; and the events of the Cultural Olympiad were given a special dispensation - a tourist visa and a letter of invitation were considered enough, even for Palestinians.  It's not surprising that, having done this once, the company thought it would be a simple matter to do the same again.

My question is this: why was 2012 a special case?  During the Olympics, we wanted to show that London was an international cultural capital, that it welcomed artists, that it welcomed the world.  But that is clearly not the default position.  In fact, it's just a lie.  For a few weeks, when it suited the PR campaign, the doors were open.  The default position, to which we immediately returned, is one of suspicion and xenophobia.  If there is any excuse not to grant a visa, it will not be granted.

Something similar happened to us in 2007, when a group of Ghanian performers were denied visas because one of them, having been born in a rural area, did not know her date of birth.  On that occasion, the British Council in Accra made the case to the Consulate, and the decision was at once overturned.  This time, even though the British Council was actively (and financially) involved in the project, they could do nothing.  Because the visa service now has very little to do with the Consular Service.  It has been "out-sourced".  Privatised.

The spin around privatisation is always that it saves red tape and cuts costs.  Our experience indicates quite the opposite.  The privatised visa system is clearly much MORE bureaucratic and impersonal than the public one.  It is also much more of a drain on the public purse: the British Council's investment in flights for these Palestinian actors was largely wasted as a result of the visa decision.  So one arm of government undermines another.  Hardly the way to cut the deficit.

Two more facts - just to underline the absurdity of the whole thing.  Razan lives in Paris, though she retains her Palestinian citizenship.  So, when she didn't get the visa, we thought we could simply buy her a connecting flight from Heathrow to get her home.  No.  Palestinians need a visa even to transit through a UK airport.  So that was a whole new flight that had to be bought.  However, one of our Palestinian actors, Iman, was able to travel to the UK with us.  Why?  Because, by accident of residency in the disputed territory of Jerusalem, she is able to travel under an Israeli passport.  And, of course, Israelis can travel to and do business in the UK without a visa.  They are above suspicion.

Two Schmucks, Three Opinions

Steve Tiller, surrounded by food

A while ago, my friend Jonathan Meth got into a Facebook spat with an actor and director called Steve Tiller.  It was about Palestine - a subject about which they are both very impassioned, not least because they are both British and Jewish, in each case secular and non-Zionist.  The Facebook spat turned into three long lunches - each three hours long, in fact.  The conversations over lunch were recorded, and form the basis of a 90 minute dialogue called Two Schmucks, Three Opinions, which I witnessed at St Barnabas Church in Bethnal Green on Friday night.  And it is rather wonderful.

The evening begins with food.  I've been getting more and more interested in how food relates to theatre - we even had a restaurant as a venue for Origins - how the experience of eating together makes the exchange of ideas a simpler matter.  In this instance, the meal reflects the core of the play, and the audience become participants in the lunch that forms the springboard for the exchanges.  The conviviality of this construction is important to the play - because conviviality is its subject.  How, it asks, can the Israeli and Palestinian people live together?  Jonathan and Steve are too nuanced and sophisticated in their thinking to suggest that they have any easy answers to this most intractable of diplomatic problems - but the form they have chosen does at least go some way towards the inescapable conclusion that they need to sit down at the same table and break bread together.

I was sitting next to a young man called Ahmed, who was one of two Palestinians in the room.  As a child of 11, he had been shot by Israeli soldiers, when he and his friends were throwing stones in Gaza.  The bullet had entered his body under the rib cage, and left through his back.  He was very fortunate to have lived.  Sitting next to Ahmed, there was nothing abstract about the political ideas Jonathan and Steve discussed: he embodied their physical reality.  Without the meal and the conversation it brought, I would not have known this.

Jonathan and Steve also bring a physical reality to the discourse.  For one thing, even though they read the transcripts of their lunches, you're constantly aware that they are speaking their own words.  If you know them, you can hear the idiosyncrasies - only Jonathan could say "It's not umbilical at all".  They've left in the overlaps and unfinished interjections, the moments when they say really stupid things - they've edited the conversations but not at the expense of the messiness that characterises what people say in the thick of an impassioned debate.  I don't usually like verbatim theatre - I don't see that language is necessarily given dramatic validity by the fact that a "real person" said it - but in this case, where the parameters are very clear and where the "real people" are also theatre-makers who can structure their transcripts without losing the spontaneity, it becomes closer to a structured improvisation, and it really works.  For another thing, they begin the piece by locating the politics firmly in their own physical presences as Jewish men - Jonathan rather disconcertingly describes his circumcision at the age of 8 days at the very beginning, and you can't get much more visceral than that.

So - the politics felt very real in the room.  And the questions - horribly insoluble.  The last part of the evening passes the debate to the audience, and there was a clear sense from everyone that the need was for Israel, somehow, to change its way of thinking about the Palestinian people, to recognise them as inhabitants of the same land, to include them in a single, cross-cultural, secular state.  Is there a role for non-Israeli Jews in this, I asked them?  The answer was that they could do as they had - invite people to dinner, debate in public, open the discourse.  It's true, of course.  It's the only way.

China controversies

The unrest in Tibet is making our work with China more controversial. With Spielberg pulling out of his Olympic role, the French talking boycotts, and nightly coverage of human rights violations, it's not really surprising that one actor has already voiced doubts about working in China for political reasons. And yet.... I tend to doubt the value of boycotts, particularly cultural boycotts. If artists simply shut up and abandon people because they disapprove of their government's policies in certain areas, then where is the hope for a way forward? Where is the possibility of dialogue?

I re-read the open letter which Ariane Mnouchkine and the Théâtre du Soleil sent to the people of Israel when they went there with L'Indiade in 1988. It states in great detail the very specific beliefs held by the company members on the Palestinian question, and on the way Israel had dealt with that question to date (and sadly it remains deeply relevant). Then it says: "We have hesitated about coming; we have talked, we have consulted a fair number of you, and we have decided not to add a facile refusal to so many criminal refusals. Nothing will persuade us to despair of the strength of words, to renounce our faith in humanity and also in art. We shall never renounce them."

Of course, this letter was published in five Israeli newspapers, in Hebrew, Arabic and English. I doubt whether such a letter would be published anywhere at all in China, even online. But that does not invalidate the truth and the inspirational quality of what it says. Or of what theatre can, with hope and passion, perhaps achieve.