Successful Boycott Sydney Festival campaign puts Israeli human rights violations in the spotlight.

Thank you to all 10,000 and more supporters who signed this petition calling on Sydney Festival to reject $20,000 of Israeli government sponsorship. Israel itself admits it uses its cultural support to ‘art-wash’ human rights violations against the Palestinian people.  

The Sydney Festival refused to take this stand.  

In response, over 40 artists and 100 creatives withdrew from the Festival, Board member, Benjamin Law, resigned and Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad, rejected the position he was about to take up on the Board.  These facts together with the indefatigable work of Palestinian and First Nations artists, activists, intellectuals and allies who articulated the importance of the boycott, overshadowed the Sydney Festival and instead shone a spotlight on Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

No more than a few days after the close of the Sydney Festival, Amnesty International released its 278 page report calling out Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.  The Sydney Festival has not commented on the Amnesty Report as at this time, nor whether they have any regrets for the stand they took.

“…Amnesty International has documented and analysed Israel’s institutionalized and systematic discrimination against Palestinians within the framework of the definition
 of apartheid under international law. “

“It has assessed that almost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military authorities, as well as governmental and quasi- governmental institutions, are involved in the enforcement of the system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] and against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory. “ Link to report.

Amnesty’s Report is part of a long list of human rights organisations – Human Rights Watch, Israeli B’tselem, AlMezan Centre - who have said the same thing.

BDS Australia will continue to work on Palestinian civil society’s call for boycotts, sanctions and divestment of Israeli companies and institutions complicit in maintaining this system of oppression and apartheid. 

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Thank you once again for standing up for justice and human rights for the Palestinian people, together we make a difference.