London protest urges Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to cancel Israel performance

Yesterday, activists from Inminds human rights group protested outside Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London urging the theatre not to breach the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel and cancel their scheduled performance at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv on 30th March.

The Cameri Theatre is inextricably linked to the Israeli military with their weekly performance’s for the troops, scholarships for soldiers and materials for military bases provided by the theatre’s funding arm.

The Cameri Theatre is also seeped in Israel’s colonisation programme with its regular performances in Israel’s Jews-only illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

A letter to the Globe’s artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, written on the day of the protest, by senior British theatre figures, and Palestinian theatre and cultural groups, asking Shakespeare’s Globe theatre not to perform at the Cameri Theatre was read out at the protest along with speeches and street theatre.

Inminds chair Abbas Ali said: “We are angry and disappointed. Why is Shakespeare’s Globe playing at a theatre complicit in war crimes? Just 44 miles up the road from the Cameri is devastated Gaza still bleeding from the last massacre. Does Palestinian suffering mean nothing to them? We spoke to the Globe’s artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, but he seemed more concerned about us projecting words onto his wall than about Palestinian lives. Rather than deal with the issue of complicity in war crimes he wanted to censor our words. Is this really what Shakespeare is about?”

Photos and story from inminds.com.