PACBI

Aluna Theatre is joining thousands of organizations that endorse PACBI’s call make a public commitment to refuse sponsorship or material support from and joint activities with Israel, its lobby groups, or any of its complicit institutions.

1. What is PACBI?
PACBI stands for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Since 2004, PACBI has called for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions based on their complicity in implementing, whitewashing or justifying the grave human rights violations perpetrated by Israel’s regime of apartheid and illegal military occupation against Palestinians, including the restriction of their freedom of movement and freedom of expression. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest legal authority, has recently condemned Israel’s military occupation and apartheid and earlier decided that Israel’s assault on Gaza plausibly violates the Genocide Convention.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) strategy, of which PACBI is a crucial component, is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. It is a form of nonviolent direct action meant to end all forms of complicity with apartheid Israel as the most meaningful form of pressure to compel it to comply with international law. PACBI is basically asking all of us to do no harm to the Palestinian liberation struggle. PACBI is a founding member of the BDS National Committee, which is distinguished as drawing together the largest coalition of Palestinian unions, mass movements and organizations in Palestine and in exile. BDS targets complicity, not identity.

2. What does a commitment to PACBI mean?
Committing to PACBI, which targets institutions not individuals, means boycotting the following:

1) Israeli cultural institutions that have not ended all forms of complicity in Israel’s regime of oppression and that have not endorsed the comprehensive rights of the Palestinian people under international law. This includes theaters, performing arts companies, orchestras, bands, etc.

2) Israeli cultural products (ie, plays) that are state commissioned and have “political strings” attached. An example of this might be a piece of theater funded in order to serve Israel’s propaganda efforts, particularly its “Brand Israel” effort, but would not apply to cultural products receiving state funding that is not attached to political/propaganda conditions, as tax-paying citizens are entitled to such funding from the state to produce cultural works.

3) Cultural events or activities that are partially or fully sponsored by an official Israeli body, a complicit institution, or an Israel lobby group. For example, an international or regional theater festival that is sponsored or otherwise supported in part or in full by a complicit Israeli institution would be boycottable.

4) Normalization projects, which intentionally bring together Palestinians/Arabs on one hand and Israelis on the other who do not recognize the comprehensive, UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return. The exception would be if the initiative is one of co-resistance to oppression, rather than deceptive co-existence under oppression, and if the Israeli party does recognize full Palestinian rights.

5) Fact-finding missions and study tours that are funded directly or indirectly by Israel, its complicit institutions, or its international lobby groups. While perhaps not as common in the theater, PACBI nonetheless notes that “balanced, independent fact-finding missions or study groups… are not boycottable, provided that no institutional link… of any sort is established with complicit Israeli institutions.”

PACBI defines complicity as follows: “As a general overriding rule, Israeli cultural institutions, unless proven otherwise, are complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, whether through their silence or actual involvement in justifying, whitewashing or otherwise deliberately diverting attention from Israel’s violations of international law and human rights.”

For more information, including distinguishing non-boycottable characteristics, refer to the official BDS guidelines.