Back in October 2023, we at Living Hyphen shared a statement expressing our unequivocal support for a free and liberated Palestine. Over the last 15 months, we have been organizing our community to end Canada’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We’ve supported Postcards for Palestine, held fundraisers for the Toronto Community Justice Fund and the Gaza Poets Society, hosted storytelling gatherings with themes of solidarity, and facilitated writing workshops dedicated to exploring our role in the movement for collective liberation.
Last August, we attended a teach-in at The Theatre Centre by Theatre Artists for Palestinian Voices on The Power of Artists: Cultural Boycotts and Beyond where we explored how cultural boycotts work, the values and power of artists in resistance, and how these connect to colonial resistance here on Turtle Island. Over the last few months, we have been in conversation with Artists Against Artwashing to learn more about what we can do to support this movement. Today we share with you that:
Living Hyphen endorses the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
PACBI leads the cultural, academic, and sports boycotts of Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, and is a founding member of the broader Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian coalition in historical Palestine and in exile.
In total solidarity with the people of Palestine, we commit to the underlying guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel:
boycott any cultural product or event funded, commissioned, and/or sponsored by an official Israeli body
not collaborate with or take money from Israeli institutions
refuse "normalization" efforts seeking to justify Israel's violence or present a false symmetry between oppressed and oppressor
advocate for others to similarly divest from Israel, end support for the oppression of Palestinians, and pressure Israel to comply with international law
Inspired by the cultural boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa, PACBI aims to draw a line between culture workers and the actions of governments funding and endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel. We want to be clear that PACBI rejects, on principle, boycotts of individuals based on their opinion or identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion).
We want to reiterate emphatically that we at Living Hyphen reject all forms of racism, including antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism, and we recognize this all as a co-constitutive part of white supremacy. We oppose any conflation between advocacy of, on the one hand, Palestinian rights and opposition to the apartheid policies of the state of Israel, and on the other, racism, hatred, and discrimination against Jewish people. We are annoyed and tired of stating the obvious fact that criticizing a state is not racism.
We call on organizations within our shared cultural sector to support the work of the Palestinian-led BDS and PACBI movements to end Israeli occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid. Moving forward, we will continue to participate in coalition-building efforts alongside artists, cultural institutions, activist groups, and organizations committed to the liberation of Palestinian people.
Finally, we want to express again that Living Hyphen is for collective liberation. Many in our community and our ancestors are from places around the world whose histories are similarly bound up in colonization, imperialism, military occupations, and racist immigration policies. We recognize that all of our struggles are interconnected and that none of us are free until we are all free.
Learn more about BDS and PACBI, as well as ongoing support for Palestine in the literary and cultural spheres through Artists Against Artwashing, Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza.
Thank you to the many organizations and coalitions that have educated us on BDS and PACBI, invited us into the conversation, and supported the crafting of this statement including Theatre Artists for Palestinian Voices, Artists Against Artwashing, Queer|Art, Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), NYC Noise, Gallery 101, and Debaser.
If you would like to learn more and endorse PACBI within your own organization, don’t hesitate to reach out to us and we will put you in touch with PACBI educators and coordinators.
