“Im Tirtzu,” an organization that defines itself as “an extra-parliamentary movement that works to strengthen and advance the values of Zionism in Israel,” has embarked on a campaign calling on Tzavta theatre in Tel Aviv to boycott Arab-Palestinian and Israeli citizen artist and director, Muhammad Bakri.
As part of this campaign, Im Tirtzu has asked members to send letters to the theatre house protesting Bakri’s scheduled appearance in Spanish fascist victim Federico Garcia Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba.” A few dozens of Im Tirtzu members also demonstrated on Monday, January 30 and the protest started one hour before the play starts.
Muhammad Bakri in Tzavta performance (Photo: The Academy of the Performing Arts)
The right wing organization claims that the boycott is a response to Bakri’s movie “Jenin, Jenin,” which is based on real events. The movie reconstructs the 2002 battle in the Jenin refugee camp using the residents’ testimonies. The film was banned from public screening in Israel and reserve soldiers who had served in Jenin filed a defamation suit arguing that the movie had sullied their names. While the court dismissed the case, the judge claimed that Bakri had not shown “good faith” and that he had not proven that his interpretation of the events were supported by reports from human rights groups. In response, Bakri said that he “seen hundreds of films that deny and ignore what happened to Palestinians, yet [people haven’t] complained or tried to ban any film.”
The call to boycott the artist is Im Tirtzu’s latest move in the broader they are waging against those they accuse of “disloyalty, subversion, and treason against Israeli institutions.” Among other things, Im Tirtzu activists have spied on classes in all Israeli universities, reporting on professors and lecturers who disagree with the movement’s fascist ideology.
A recent study conducted by a group of academics, students, and artists found that a blacklist maintained by Im Tirtzu and two other groups, Isra-Campus and Israeli Academia Monitor, delineates ten percent of Israeli academics as anti-Zionists. The list includes over a thousand Israeli citizens, made up mostly of academics but including writers, journalists, politicians, and other public figures. These McCarthyist organizations are not marginalized within Israeli politics. According to “Haaretz” newspaper, contributions to Im Tirtzu increased fourfold last year. Among the donors to were major financial groups such as the Azrieli Group and Leo Schachter Diamond Company.
According to “Haaretz” during 2007, Im Tirtzu reported a total income of 260 thousand shekels in contributions. According to the association’s most recent financial statement, it spent 1.14 million on promotional campaigns in 2010–more than ten times than it spent in 2009. The report also reveals that the organization received a total of 1.66 million shekels in contributions in 2010, almost four times more than in 2009. In 2008 and 2009, Im Tirtzu also received an annual donation of 374,000 shekels (about 100,000 dollars) from “Christians United for Israel” (CUFI), a Christian fundamentalist organization based in the United States. CUFI, which is part of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, is headed by David Brog. Reverend John Hagee, a vociferous anti-Catholic and Islamophobic preacher from Texas, also serves on its executive board. Hagee has stated that be believes that the Holocaust was God’s will because most Jews ignored Herzl’s Zionist call to immigrate to what was, in Herzl’s time, Palestine. Hagee has also claimed that Hitler’s persecution of Jews was a “divine plan” to lead Jews to form the modern state of Israel.
According to a Communist Party of Israel statement “Im Tirtzu’s call for a boycott against Bakri and the organization’s attacks on prominent Israeli academics are part of an attempt to secure Netanyahu’s permanency in government by erasing the last reminders of Israeli democratic spaces”. On a related note, Netanyahu himself recently claimed that “Haaretz” newspaper, which adopts a more liberal interpretation of Zionism, is an enemy agent. According to The Jerusalem Post Editor, Steve Lindy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that “the ‘New York Times’ and ‘Haaretz’ set the agenda for the anti-Israeli campaign all over the world. Journalists read them every morning, and base their stories on what they read in The Times and ‘Ha’aretz’.” Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat’s implied support for keeping “Jenin, Jenin” director Mohammed Bakri off the Israeli stage.
The ministry did state that Livnat “expects the Tzavta administration to independently reconsider” whether Bakri should be hired, which seemingly lays the responsibility for ousting him at the theater’s feet. Perhaps Livnat should watch “The House of Bernarda Alba,” about the forced imposition of rigid conservative norms and the violent infringement of freedom and human dignity.
Incidentally, the Academy of the Performing Arts, who works at the Hagada Hasmalit – Alternative Cultural Center in Tel-Aviv premises and which is behind this production, is dedicating it to the memory of one of its best and most beloved teachers, Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was murdered in Jenin where he worked in a Palestinian theater.
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