Prominent film director, Mira Nair, has announced via her official Twitter account that she will not be attending Israel’s upcoming Haifa Film Festival. In a five-part statement, tweeted last Friday, Nair said: “I was just invited to Israel as a guest of honor at the Haifa International Film Festival…I will not be going to Israel at this time. I will [only] go to Israel when the [Israeli Separation] walls come down…when Apartheid [there] is over…I stand…[with] the larger Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) [movement against Israel]”
Mira Nair lives in New York City where she began her film career as an actress and director. Nair’s films have won several awards including at the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival and her debut film, “Salaam Bombay” was nominated for an Academy Award. Nair’s latest film “Vanity Fair” was produced in 2004 and her upcoming film is “The Reluctant” starring Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland and Liev Schreiber. By cancelling on Israel Nair follows in the footsteps of another esteemed film director, UK’s Ken Loach, who in 2006 declined to attend the Israeli premiere of his film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”. Loach, too, said his decision was in protest of Israel’s policies and that he supported the cultural boycott of Israel. In 2010, well known British-Jewish film director, Mike Leigh, also called off his visit to Israel in protest of Israel’s racist policies against the indigenous Palestinians.
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UK Rock Legend Eric Burdon of “The Animals” Cancels Upcoming Israel Gig
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UK rock legend, Eric Burdon, of the music band “The Animals” has canceled his scheduled August 1st appearance in Israel. Burdon’s management announced on Tuesday this week that they’ve “been receiving mounting pressure [to cancel]”. According to Israel’s Jerusalem Post Newspaper, Burdon had received a number of online appeals to cancel his Israeli appearance. Burdon and The Animals were one of the most influential bands of the 1960s, with hits like “The House of the Rising Sun,” “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, “We Gotta Get out of This Place” and “It’s My Life”.
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Other Recent Cultural Boycott of Israel Victories
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In a press statement issued on Thursday, Khulekani Chiya of BDS South Africa welcomed Nair and Burdon’s decisions to boycott Israel, adding that: “The boycott of Israel is no more a discussion, it’s a fact…we warmly salute Mira Nair and all other artists who are refusing to entertain Israeli Apartheid”.
Other high-profile artists to have boycotted Israel in recent years include world renown musician, Stevie Wonder; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd; Grammy-winning jazz singer, Cassandra Wilson; singer-songwriter DJ Cat Power (Chan Marshall); South African Nobel Prize Laureate, J.M. Coetzee; Slumdog Millionaire author, Vikas Swarup; Pulitzer Prize winning author, Alice Walker of the acclaimed novel, “The Color Purple”; author and scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking; and the UK dance band, Faithless. Local South African musicians to have recently backed the boycott of Israel include Simphiwe Dana (see: http://tinyurl.com/cyguvjx) and Tumi Molekane, from Tumi & the Volume (see: http://tinyurl.com/pqtpx52).
In 2005, after years of Israeli aggression, Apartheid policies and ongoing violence, Palestinians issued a call to the international community for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to be applied against Israel as a non-violent method to pressure Israel to end its violations of international law, respect Palestinian human rights and engage in fair negotiations for a just peace. The Palestinian call for BDS was based on and inspired by the successful boycott of Apartheid South Africa. Since 2005, Israel has suffered from a significant cultural boycott and an increasing economic boycott. Israel has subsequently passed a law, the “anti-boycott law”, penalizing those that call for economic, cultural or academic boycotts against Israel – the law has been slammed by Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others.
