Israeli Cultural Exchange Not Welcome in Santa Barbara

by Peoples Emergency Center for Peace in Gaza Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 at 11:50 PM

A Call to Boycott and Protest of Israeli Cultural Exchange at Santa Barbara's Arlington Theatre on February 24th, 2009: Israel's Batsheva Dance company

As the bodies are counted, the international ruling class expects its subjects to pretend that we did not just witness a cold blooded massacre. As though acting from a script written by arch-anti-Semites, Tzippi Livni, Ehud Barack and their co-conspirators took advantage of their last precious moments of the Bush regime to kill as many Palestinians as they could get away with.

This despicable event was not a war. War entails a degree of courage facing an enemy who is evenly matched and presents an immediate threat to a nation. Israel - arguably not a legitimate nation but rather an invasive intruder and a squatter - heavily outgunned the rag tag defenders in Gaza, and achieved a kill ration of 100-to-1. That is not warfare: it is a coward's game of slaughter.

For this, Israel must pay in the court of world public opinion. It is not enough to say tsk tsk. It is imperative that the price of this horrible crime against humanity be paid in full. Not by blood, or, at least, not upon motion of American peace activists. But it must be made clear that Americans will not accomodate the mass murder in our name.

The crime was done with out money, our guns, our tanks. The Israeli "soldiers", if you can call them that, in many cases hold dual passports and have townhouses in New York as well as Israel. They are not homeless, they are not threatened by the haphazard, virtually useless shells that Hama lobs into fields and desert locations. Yet we are expected to mourn the rare Israeli fatality while overlooking literally a hundred murdered Palestinians.

The risk of the Gaza missiles is less that the background homicide rate of living in any major city such as Los Angelos, Chicago or Detroit. I have had people murdered on my own block, in my hood, around the corner, all my life, in tough neighborhoods. This is a sad thing, but it is no excuse to go and slaughter hundreds. Shame on Israel.

RESPOND TO THE CRIMES OF ISRAEL!
Protest the Bat Sheva Dance company performane in Santa Barbara on Feb 24th. The Arlington Theatre in in Down town on the main street you can't miss it. Bring signs, drums, whistles, horns, puppets, costumes....

Here is a snippet of a review from Anarchist Anti-Spectator:

"Spawn of one of the richest of the world's bourgeoisies, the legendary Rothschilds, the Batsheva Dance company writhes in alternately infantile and insanely narcissistic gestures, as though mimicking the worst stereotype of homosexuality. Set with ghastly sadomasochistic backdrop, the sets evoke concentration camps, with humans buried from the neck down, in bondage, as, above them, their captors oscillate between childish anal eroticism, as though potty training all over again, and brutish mock-rape. Altogether, the most hideous excuse for art one could imagine." Carlos Dela Guerra