[Stand-up Comedy]
Manal Awad
Palestinian Actress
and Comedienne
Samir Eskanda
Palestinian Artist, Activist
Koinoi Thnoitoi
Band
Chrysilia Katsoli
Cultural Network for
Palestine GR, ASFA
Lauretta Macaulay
United African
Women Organization
Jenny Karaviti
The Hellenic Theatre
and Education Network
Vasiliki Tsiftsi
Singer
Tiny Jackal
Rapper
Christos Dimopoulos
Director of Amnesty
International, Greece
[Music]
Nahed Bishara
Palestinian Singer
[Music]
Chaonia
Polyphonic Ensemble
[Moderator]
Rea Wallden
Film Theorist
and Filmmaker
Cultural Network for Palestine is an international-facing movement of artists and cultural workers from across multiple artistic fields in Greece, standing in solidarity with our Palestinian peers. We’re joining forces and organizing to make arts and culture apartheid and genocide-free zones—we’re reclaiming the legacy of Greek solidarity with Palestine—and we call on our peers from all spheres—from music to theater, literature to publishing, dance to visual arts, cinema to graphic design—to join us.
If you’ve been waiting to find your role in the movement, the time is now.
Unite with artists all around the world standing for justice, for Palestinian life, land and culture.
CNP upholds the call from our Palestinan peers to refuse cultural collaboration with the Israeli state and reject artworks that normalize Israel’s gross violations of human rights. The call demands an end to occupation and apartheid, full equality for all, and Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled. As the Israeli state accelerates its attempts to use cultural investment and bi-lateral collaboration to normalize its illegal occupation and genocidal campaign, Greek arts and culture workers must meet this effort head on.
Acknowledging the power of art to shape collective consciousness, Cultural Boycott of Israel is the most effective form of solidarity that artists and cultural workers can uphold.
For over 77 years, the Palestinian people have been subject to a violent, racist campaign of ethnic cleansing and occupation by settler-colonial Israel, condemned as an apartheid regime by human rights organizations across the globe. As a result of the impunity Israel has nonetheless been afforded amongst its Western allies, we are now witnessing, with horror, a genocide of unprecedented cruelty and industrial scale: indiscriminate slaughtering of civilians and the largest child massacre of the 21st century; widespread assassination of journalists, academics and artists, doctors and aid workers; targeted destruction of hospitals, schools, protected cultural sites and places of worship; and forced mass starvation.
As Israel faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity before the International Court of Justice, arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court, and a landmark ruling demanding immediate dismantling of its illegal occupation, the Greek government persists in deepening its collaboration with Israeli war criminals. We condemn, in the strongest terms, the Greek state’s diplomatic, military, economic and cultural ties to the Israeli apartheid regime, and the complicity of Greek corporations and institutions that profit from, normalize and whitewash its genocide, land-theft, and settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians. As Israel continues to invest massively in desperately trying to win over public opinion worldwide, citing, specifically, the vital role of culture in its global propaganda campaign (hasbara), we call upon our field to counter these efforts head on.
As artists and cultural workers, we recognize the unique power of art to impact society and shape its widely understood imperatives of freedom, equality and social justice. Just as we assume our role in intersectional struggles for racial, social feminist, queer, trans, disability, climate and land justice, we must respond to the call of our Palestinian peers to turn the values art promises into action. We speak the language of freedom, while our Palestinian peers are separated from loved ones by checkpoints, detained as political prisoners, tortured and assassinated. We champion equality, as Palestinians living under apartheid are denied their inalienable human rights and forced from their homes and land by racist settlers. We foreground accessibility, as each bombing campaign robs Palestinian children of their limbs. We defend the vitalness of culture, while historical sites are destroyed and Palestinian land, agriculture, and ways of living, are decimated.
It is up to us to counter the criminal silence of our cultural institutions, beholden to donor and state interests, and stand against the censorship and blacklisting of those speaking out. As humans and as artists, we will not be coerced into silence as we watch, live-streamed, yet another attempt to erase a systematically oppressed, indigenous people and the sources of life their land contains. Institutions and artists alike cannot claim to be concerned with the crises facing humanity—including the wholesale destruction of our planet—while being complicit in the art-washing agenda of a genocidal regime hand-in-hand with a military-industrial complex profiting from death by the billions.
We, the undersigned artists and cultural workers, stand firmly with the Palestinian people in their fight for freedom, self-determination, and Right of Return. We commit to using our voices and our artistic and cultural practices as tools of liberation, and to being ambassadors of truth against the grievous malpractice of Western media who manufacture consent for war crimes. With unwavering principle and moral clarity, we refuse to accept complicit Israeli sponsorship or cooperate with Israel’s art-washing efforts, and we dedicate ourselves to spreading awareness within our field.
We call on our peers from all spheres—from music to theater, literature to publishing, dance to visual arts, cinema to graphic design—as well as every person of conscience, to join us in solidarity with our Palestinian peers and unite with artists all around the world speaking up for justice, for Palestinian life, land and culture. No one is free unless we are all free.