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.

Janet Suzman

Last night saw the last of our talks on African theatre, which, like the first one back in May, was co-presented with Chickenshed, alongside their production of The Rain that Washes.  Janet Suzman is a "Founding Patron" of Chickenshed, so it was a great chance for me to interview her for 45 minutes.

If only it had been longer.  While Janet is incredibly famous in the UK as a classical actor, and has had the odd brush with Hollywood as well, very few people know about her work in South Africa.  But that is actually the most exciting bit.  As she said in our chat, there is something about the country of her birth that has kept pulling her back throughout her life; and there is something about countries in crisis, countries which have been invaded, and countries very much in the process of becoming that makes their theatre vital and immediate.

We talked about her early years, her growing awareness of injustice, and her family's involvement in the struggle - Helen Suzman was her aunt.  We talked about her breaking of Equity's cultural boycott to direct John Kani in Othello at the Market Theatre - she got permission from the ANC in exile, who agreed that Shakespeare was a protest playwright - and in any case, she suggested, the boycott played right into the hands of the regime as it meant there were no dissenting voices in the public arena.  We talked about her adaptation of The Cherry Orchard as The Free State - an extraordinary celebration of the end of apartheid.

Today, The Free State perhaps feels unduly optimistic.  But, as Janet said, it encapsulated the spirit of a moment, the euphoria that greeted Mandela's election.  Almost twenty years later, laws from the apartheid era are being used by a black President to justify the shooting of striking miners.  This isn't the Rainbow Nation which the play eagerly expected.  And so we talked about what a revival today could mean - how the cold wind of the future might blow through the falling trees.

Taki Rua

I've been doing some exploratory workshopping with Taki Rua. Very nice to be back in a rehearsal room, working with actors. One of them is Maaka, who I already know from Strange Resting Places. There's also Aaron, who stage managed that show and is now acting in Twain, a terrific Maori woman called Ngapaki, and two other guys, Alan and James.

In the very limited time available to us, we can only really scratch the surface a bit. We manage to create a few intriguing little scenarios, and we also get to talk about Maori theatre and its place in relation to Maori people, New Zealand and the world. It's intriguing that so much Maori theatre is historical - it's to do with the ghosts, I suppose. But Maori film tends to be very contemporary. We talk about the possibility of bringing the ghosts directly into the contemporary world - but we don't really manage to do it practically. It would take some weeks to manage that!

I go to a show called 360, which involves sitting on a swivel chair while the action moves around on a circular stage. Then on to the Festival Club, where I get to meet Lissa, the Festival director, as well as the Chair of her board - a former Minister - and some key decision makers from Perth and Auckland. Very pleasing to hear that they all know about Border Crossings, and are interested in our work. Lots of DVDs to send out when I get home!

Spent the morning at the NZ Film Archive, watching a film called Patu! It's about the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand, the protests against it, and the extreme violence through which they were put down. The film-maker is Maori, but specifically Maori resistance is only a small part of the film - though an important one. It's very interesting to see the links that were made between them and the anti-apartheid struggle. Of course, it was Australia's approach to the Aboriginal people that gave the South Africans the model for apartheid.