Australian Artists "Demand" a Ceasefire

What a tiresome, self-congratulatory mob our performers are

More than 3200 Australian creatives have signed a letter calling on Anthony Albanese and the nation’s top arts institutions to back a ceasefire in Gaza.

As if I needed another reason not attend live performances in Australia.

What a tiresome, self-congratulatory mob our performers are. 

This latest temper tantrum follows three actors staging an anti-Israel protest at the end of a recent Sydney Theatre Company production.

Now artists Australia-wide have announced a mass protest for this Tuesday.

Allow me to take you, step-by-step, through their protest letter, the text of which is in bold …

We are the artists, producers, front-of-house staff, audiences & beyond who keep this industry alive.

They obviously chose the comedians to write their letter!

The arts industry is ‘kept alive’ by taxpayer subsidies; more than $200m a year.

The ABC gets more than $1b a year!

We’re here, unified in ‘Australia’, a colonised country built on the genocide and dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

I’m hearing y’all. And I’m wondering why you’re all still here!

If it’s the case that Australia - I love how they write ‘Australia’ in inverted comas - is built on stolen land, why haven’t our artists handed over the keys to their homes, given up the wealth they have accumulated, and departed these shores?

Oh wait. You want Indigenous people to be paid compensation, not by yourselves but by taxpayers. Like how you want the arts ‘industry’ to run. Freeloaders.

We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation from colonialism, apartheid & ethnic cleansing and call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to occupation.

If artists are going to stand in solidarity with Indigenous people, they’d be better standing with Jews! It is the Jews who are indigenous to the land of Israel, having been there for thousands of years.

And if artists claim the Jews are not indigenous to Israel, where then do our artistic class suggest the Jews go?

As for claims that Israel is an apartheid state, again, the artsits’ letter must have been written by comedians. Have any of our arts class even been to Israel? Israel is a multi-ethnic state. There are Arabs in the Israeli military, and in the Israeli Parliament.

How many Jews live in Gaza?

How many Jews were elected in Palestinian elections?

How many Jews even live in Gaza, or in the West Bank, or in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, or Iran for that matter?

And here’s another thing. The Hamas Charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish people and yet our artists accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing”?

They’re having a lend of us, surely!

Ethnic cleansing is not something Israel calls for, it is what our artists call for.

They end their letter with “from the river to the sea” which is nothing but a call for Jews to be driven from their land.

We are calling for collective public actions of solidarity and we are making demands of our government and our arts institutions.

I’m calling for free wifi on the moon. Big deal.

Side by side these First Nations and settler migrants of all generations and ancestries and identities demand:

1. An end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Where would you like the Jews to go? Australia? To see one of your shows?

2. For the Australian government and Foreign Minister Penny Wong to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

There was a ceasefire. Hamas broke it on October 7 when thousands of their jihadists invaded Israel to rape, burn, murder and kidnap Jews.

And there was a ceasefire in the current conflict just a couple of weeks ago, the terms of which were broken by Hamas when they fired rockets into and launched a terror attack within Israel.

Do the artists in this country really expect that Hamas can continue to hold men, women and children as hostages while demanding a ceasefire? Comedy gold.

3. For our arts institutions to join the call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

If the arts ‘institutions’ want to drive their audiences to Netflix and Stan and Binge, go ahead.

4. For the safety and rights of artists to be honoured wherever they may work.

You imagine your “safety” is at risk because the Sydney Theatre Company won’t allow you to repeat your anti-semitic protest at the end of shows?

What about the safety of Jewish audience members and donors? What about their “right” to enjoy a show without being demonised from stage by ignorant blow hards?

This is urgent. The genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza has severely escalated since the end of the "truce" - we cannot become complacent or fatigued.

First, the truce was broken by Hamas. Weird you don’t write a letter to them!

Second, there is no “genocide” taking place in Gaza. Yes civilians are dying in the war. That is both tragic and a fact of war, a war started by Hamas.

And the death-toll inside Gaza would be far lower if Hamas weren’t using its own civilians as human shields. Of course, the artists, producers and front of house staff don’t mention that.

Our resistance will not be overwritten, censored or ignored.

Acting publicly in support of Palestinian liberation is necessary. From the successful artist boycott of Sydney Festival in 2022, to the Blak cast of The Visitors through Moogahlin & Sydney Theatre Company (STC) leading by example with a post-show statement– this is what global solidarity looks like.

I’m not sure what global solidarity looks like. But know what Jew hatred looks like.

And this didn’t start with 3 actors wearing the keffiyeh at the curtain call of STC’s The Seagull or the over 300 journalists who co-signed a letter asking for ethical journalistic practices to be upheld in the reporting of the siege on Gaza.

The resistance is over 75 years long and momentum is only growing.

Why do they only ever go back 75 years? Have our artistic class been so busy reading their own reviews they’ve never had time to pick up a history book?

Perhaps we should talk about the Kingdom of David who ruled all of Israel thousands of years ago.

By the way, most of our performers will mark Christmas in a few weeks, the celebration of a Jewish man born in Israel 2000 years ago.

But they are so blinded by hate they won’t even make the connection. And those who do make the connection will comically argue that Jesus was Palestinian!

These artists are not alone. Our power is in our collective action; and so on Wednesday 13th December 2023:

Wear your keffiyeh, lapel pin or Palestinian solidarity shirt to wherever you work

Show up in solidarity at your local gallery, theatre, venue, art after hours

Take a collective photo at work, share a post

Add your signature

We will not cross the line to fill vacated roles

We will call out your covert censorship

Yawn!

Shame on STC for commodifying the Black & Brown bodies and stories on their stages for social and financial capital, while demanding they stay silent.

It’s got nothing to do with skin colour and everything to do with performing your job!

Red and yellow, black and white, you don’t get to use the Sydney Theatre Company stage to promote your pet political cause, and even less so when your pet political cause is anti-semitism.

Is there are more entitled group in Australia than members of the ‘arts’?

Shame on contemporary arts institutions that welcome Palestinian artists into their spaces as long as they are silent. Shame on institutions that make moral compromises in preference for coddling their donors and subscribers.

Ha!

Shame on artists, producers and front of house staff who demand taxpayer funding only to cry when taxpayers expect something other than abuse in return for it.

We refuse to be ushered into silent complicity.

No-one is silencing you. You’re free to protest on your own time and on your own dime. Oh wait, you don’t have of your own money.

Whether graceful, justifiably angry, digital or live— it is increasingly clear that to stand for the right for Palestinians to live liberated and safe, is not only punishable but must be apologised for.

What about the rights of Jews to live in safety? Our artists seem to forget that on the morning of October 7, more than 1000 Jews were raped and burned alive in their own beds by um, Palestinians!

And, as I have already pointed out and as our artists must surely know (because they can’t be completely stupid) Hamas demands the elimination of Israel from the river to the sea.

So tell me again who is threatening who’s safety, and who needs to be liberated from whom?

The show mustn’t go on as usual when people are being massacred.

I would suggest your show won’t go on as usual. Instead, it’s likely to go on without an audience since you’re alienating most of them with your vitriol.

And by the way, ever thought of writing a Dear John letter to Hamas, suggesting they release the hostages? No? Why is that I wonder?

From The River To The Sea. Always Was Always Will Be.

That our artists finish their diatribe with a call for the destruction of Israel is bad enough.

That they suggest the violence of Hamas might be justified by Australian Aboriginals makes them a danger not just to Jews, but to every Australia. And we’re paying them.