The Tricycle Theatre appears to have run into a row over its decision to pressure the Jewish Film Festival not to accept money from the Israeli government. The Tricycle's reasoning is explained here. It strikes me as less than sound.
The Israeli operations in Gaza have left the area in ruins and killed or injured thousands of civilians who posed no credible threat to Israel. It has also left the essential political problem unresolved, and I can see no reason not to believe that there will not be another such conflict in a few years, since the Netanyahu government seems firmly in control and firmly opposed to any kind of political settlement other than continually seeking to crush the Palestinians by brute force.
Outside governments and bodies seem to have no ability to influence the situation. The Israeli government seems willing to treat even the American government with disdain. The Israel/Palestine conflict also seems to arouse emotions in a way that, say, the brutal conflict in Syria does not.
All this seems to lead people into what Yes Prime Minister called the politician's syllogism: "We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do it."
A similar reaction can be seen in the arguments over the Public Realm contract last year. I argued before that when Brent Council signed the Public Realm Contract, the campaigners arguing for a boycott of Veolia as part of an Israeli boycott would achieve the opposite of what they intended.
The Tricycle seem to have got themselves into a position that, pursued consistently, will be utterly unworkable. The Jewish Film Festival is a celebration of Jewish culture and does not therefore in itself have any pro or anti Israeli stance. The Tricycle is objecting because part of the Festival's funding comes from a "party to the conflict". As far as I read it, the Tricycle is not actually condemning the actions of the Israeli government, merely claiming that accepting funding from a "party" in the conflict is inherently political, and therefore unacceptable. It does not claim that the Israelis have made any political demands e.g. only showing pro-Israeli films. The logic of this is that the Tricycle will not accept any funding from any "party". I would have thought this could easily be extended to say the Egyptian government, which is arguably acting as an Israeli ally in blockading Gaza.
I also don't see why a similar policy would not apply to any other conflict e.g. the war in the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Kashmir and so on. Where the British government becomes a "party" to a conflict, it would be logical for the Tricycle to extend its policy to money from the UK government.
If the logic is that it is political to accept funding from any agent that acts politically, even if (as appears to be the case here) there appear to be no political conditions, then presumably the Tricycle would not accept money from those "parties" either.
I don't think this is really what the Tricycle intends, it is merely the victim of muddled thinking by its board, or whoever made this decision.
Brent Council appoints Board members to the Tricycle, and it would be good to hear what position they took on his decision.
In the meantime, I hope that those who have been tweeting that they will boycott the Tricycle will think again. I don't see that that would be productive in any way. And I hope that the Tricycle Board will think the whole thing through, and come up with a position that they can apply consistently.
1 comment:
This seems sensible. The festival do seem to have thrown an unnecessary hissy fit, but the Tricycle, no doubt with the best of intentions, seem to have backed themselves into a corner. They'll never be able to apply their own principles consistently. As you say, a film festival in itself is presumably apolitical or as good as, and for a Jewish arts festival to take funding from the Israeli embassy is hardly surprising.
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