An image of dancing shoes imposed over a photo of destruction in Gaza used on flyers publicizing a protest of Israel’s touring Batsheva Dance Company.

Palestine solidarity activists are in the midst of protesting an Israeli dance company’s tour. They are urging people to boycott their shows and protest them since the tour is sponsored by the government as an exercise in public diplomacy.
The Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv is touring the U.S. and Canada. It started in January and runs through March. Activists have coordinated to organize protests at many of the dance company’s stops.

One protest organizer, Michelle J. Kinnucan of the Middle East Task Force of Ann Arbor, wrote that as a “recipient of public financing since the 1990s, the dance troupe is clearly an Israeli apartheid cultural institution.” Others have pointed out that it has no Arab performers and is publicly stated it is “proud to be considered Israel’s leading ambassador.”

Its performance in Ann Arbor was met by protests in mid-February. Dozens of protesters gathered Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. They distributed hundreds of leaflets. The demonstrations were sponsored by a wide array of area peace and activist groups.

One Ann Arbor-based organizer, Henry Herskovitz, called such boycotts important preventative measures against future Israeli atrocities. “We have a choice,” he said. “Either we wait until the next massacre occurs, then conduct street protests” or “we can join the worldwide boycott against Israel.”

This followed protests in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Minnesota.

Pittsburgh’s activists wrote a letter to the dance company asking them to “voice your unequivocal opposition and denunciation of the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians, from brutal occupation, to apartheid-like policies against non-Jewish citizens.”

In California, more recently, the new organization, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (CACPI), led the way against Batsheva.

Professor of art at Cal State Northridge, Edie Pistolesi, helped organize the efforts at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I’ve decided to keep the same message, like a mantra,” in the posters she designed, Pistolesi said, “400 children of Gaza will not dance, because Israel killed them.”

The artistic and executive director of the program hosting the performance issued a statement about the silent vigil and boycott: “I certainly respect the right of protestors to express their opinions on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. At the same time, I am disappointed that they would, by advocating a boycott of Batsheva’s performances at Royce Hall, attempt to silence the artistic voice of this outstanding dance company.”

The artistic director and choreographer of Batsheva Dance, Ohan Naharin, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “my work stays away from any religious, national, political and ethnic connotation.”

He said he agreed with the protests if they are “against the abuse of power by the Israeli army in the [Gaza] war,” and “the occupation.”

However, Naharin also told a Vancouver newspaper that “the boycott is just preventing something that is good to come out of Israel, something that opposes the violence…. Artists represent something that is usually missing in politics, which is the search for new solutions.”

One California professor, Sherna Berger Gluck, who is on CACBI’s organizing committee, told the Los Angeles Times that Batsheva cannot disassociate itself from the government’s policies so easily. It gets government funding and is marketed as a “cultural ambassador,” she pointed out.

While the boycotts have not stopped any performances, they are pointing to a new level of activism since Israel’s Gaza and Lebanon offensives the past few years. Gluck pointed out that the demographics of the activists are evolving as well, “Six of our endorsing groups are mainly Jewish groups; I am Jewish myself, but our [academic] group is very diverse.”

The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (CACPI), an organization started by American professors, is actively working to advance the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions call. In 2005, Palestinian civil society organizations asked activists around the world to push for Israel’s isolation, as a way to bring about freedom and security for the Palestinians.