Just Dance!

Every two years, Aotearoa’s capital city plays host to the New Zealand Festival.  Promoted as a spectacle of culture and arts for “explorers and dreamers,” this year’s extravangaza was rather unfairly sidelined by a small political protest.

John Minto

John Minto

As part of the so-called “BDS” (Boycott, Divestments and Sactions) movement agianst Israel, the country’s most prominent protestor, John Minto, once again rounded up his rent-a-mob troops to protest the involvement of Israel’s renowned Batsheva Dance Company in the festival.

Minto and his cohorts first demanded the government deny members of the dance company visas to the country.  In well publicised letters to Foreign Minister Murray McCully and Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse, the group urged that they provide “practical solidarity to the Palestinian struggle” by refusing them.

The group insisted this action was required for New Zealand to fulfil its “obligations” to the Palestinians under international law. “Such a decision will be welcomed by Palestinians as part of the international pressure to bring change to the policies of the Israeli apartheid state as well as by those countries thinking supporting New Zealand’s bid for a UN Security Council seat,” the letter said.

In a widely reported decision, McCully announced the company would not be refused visas. Noting the government pursues “a balanced and constructive approach to the Israel-Palestinian issue,” he said that “the Batsheva Dance Company is made up of dancers from around the world and is coming to New Zealand as part of a wider Australasian tour.”

Not to be denied his time in the spotlight, Minto, who last year unsuccessfully ran for the Auckland mayoralty, then organised a protest outside the Batsheva Dance Company’s Saturday night performance.

Ultimately, this resulted in about 40 anti-Israel protesters facing off against a slightly larger counter-demonstration organised by Wellington Jewish community leader David Zwartz. Extensive publicity was generated by, and afforded to, Minto’s small protest.

Local media, long in thrall to Minto’s ability to generate headlines and outrage among the general public, probably paid the anti-Batsheva campaign and eventual protest more attention than the numbers warranted.

However, to the eyes of this observer, there was something a bit different and positive about the coverage of the anti-Batsheva campaign compared to  past efforts by Minto and his pro-BDS comrades. That difference was the coverage given to the counter-demonstration in views opposed to those of the anti-Israel activists.

When McCully refused to deny visas to the dance company it was reported. When Zwartz said the allegations that Israel was an apartheid state were racist and unfounded it was reported. When the Auckland Jewish Council co-Chairs described the anti-Batsheva campaign as “a cheap publicity stunt that should be exposed for its sinister agenda” it was reported.

Apart from the less mainstream media — like Scoop and a number of blogs, all of which have always tended towards a pro-Palestinian bias, local media reported both sides of the story. The STUFF website even published a review of the Batsheva show.

Comments from Batsheva’s artistic director, Ohad Naharin, were also widely reported. Naharin said he was “disappointed to see a group of intelligent people wasting their money and their energy on something that won’t result in anything.”

He told local media he had experienced this kind of “impotent activity” for years. “The situation in the West Bank is tragic and indeed every effort must be made to change it. If I believe that boycotting our performances could bring any progress in ending the occupation, I would join the boycott myself.”

In an article in the National Business Review journalist John Daly-Peoples went even further. He compared the anti-Batsheva campaign to the “spirit of Nazi Germany” and said the pro-Palestinian activists would be “using the same harassment techniques used by the Nazis to close down Jewish and liberal performances in the 1980s.”

The boycotting of cultural event is misguided, Daly-Peoples seed. “As it is cultural activities, such as Darren Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which have promoted active dialogue and been one of the significant ways in which the Israelis and the Palestinians have made some reconciliation.”

He also pointed out that the “myopic approach to boycotting lets the Russians off the hook… despite them funding the play A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, also on during the festival, and despite the country’s stand on gay rights and their support of the Assad regime which is undermining the Palestinian cause.”

While Minto in his acolytes claim success — on the somewhat spurious grounds that five people bailed up by his protest said they decided not to attend the performance — this seems closer to wishful thinking than to reality.

It is hard to know what the reasonably measured response of the media and the general public to this particular campaign might mean in the broader scheme of things.

However, it seems that the views of the Festival’s Executive Director, Sue Paterson, that festival shows should be selected solely on the basis of artistic merit was the primary winner in this saga.

Source:  Miriam Bell, Australian-Israeli Review, April 2014.

Speak Your Mind

*