The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the largest Palestinian coalition that leads the global grassroots Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, commends the almost 200 Scottish arts organisations endorsing PACBI’s call for the cultural boycott of Israel.
The Scottish Artists Union, ATLAS Arts, Deveron Projects, Scottish Queer International Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival and BUZZCUT are among them, reflecting the depth of commitment within Scottish arts to ending complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime.
In 1993, South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela told crowds in Glasgow, whose city council had awarded him the Freedom of the City: “While we were physically denied our freedom in the country of our birth, a city 6,000 miles away, and as renowned as Glasgow, refused to accept the legitimacy of the apartheid system, and declared us to be free.”
BDS, which today marks 20 years since its founding, is itself deeply inspired by the South African struggle. The almost 200 Scottish arts organisations endorsing PACBI are continuing this radical legacy, and recognising their ethical duty to do no harm to Palestinians. Palestinians salute Art Workers for Palestine Scotland’s tireless and creative organising.
Beyond Scotland, many hundreds of arts organisations–including publishers, theaters, venues, dance companies, film and music festivals, unions, record labels, galleries and others–have endorsed the PACBI call, and/or become apartheid-free zones. Tens of thousands of artists in every field have also publicly endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions and cultural events.
Yet the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow has recently dismissed its community’s calls on it to endorse PACBI, and reportedly colluded with police to repress peaceful protestors organising a creative sit-in, leading to the violent arrest and brutalisation of a woman who reportedly had to undergo emergency surgery as a result.
Palestinians condemn this institutional repression and silencing. We call on the CCA to meet its ethical duty and the demands of its community by joining the almost 200 Scottish arts organisations endorsing PACBI—by far the highest proportional uptake of our call in any country on earth. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is sustained by complicity. Solidarity begins by ending it. #endorsePACBI.