Tribune des acteurs et actrices de la scène culturelle française pour la défense de la Palestine

We, artists of the French performing arts scene, workers in the arts, unite our voices to express our solidarity and support for the Palestinian people.

We appeal to you today, Madame Rima Abdul-Malak, Minister of Culture, and you, directors of artistic institutions. We bring to your attention our deep concern about the events currently unfolding in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Contrary to what has been asserted by the President of the Republic, not all French men and women stand by his side to support the far-right Israeli colonial regime, which, by its disregard for international law, has led to this tragedy. It aligns itself with the succession of Israeli governments that have also violated the partition plan agreed upon by the UN in 1947, as well as the multiple resolutions adopted by the UN since 1967.

For this reason, and because we reject the injunction that Zionism is an ideology supported by the entire Jewish community, and Hamas represents the entire Palestinian community, we publish this open letter today. We affirm our right to question the acts committed by a government whose excesses constitute violations of international law.

We reject the dangerous association that unjustly seeks to pit Israeli civilians against Palestinians and call for a united effort to combat anti-Semitism in all its forms, as well as the hatred towards Palestinians, the dramatic consequences of which are evident today in the extreme bombings suffered by the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.

We denounce the double standards policy towards an occupied people – the Palestinian people – and an occupying State – Israel, an imbalance in power relations that the government and most French media fail to recall. We denounce the numerous violations of international law committed by Israel, whose expansionist policy is openly colonialist and militarized.

One cannot claim to desire peace when a state deprives a people of their right to self-determination and subjects them to brutal military occupation, illegal colonization, and apartheid, as documented by numerous human rights organizations and UN experts.

We are talking about a state that commits illegal forced expulsions of tens of thousands of Palestinians, denying their right of return guaranteed by international law and forcing them to live in refugee camps in their own country, often for the benefit of settlers from the United States or Europe.

A state that arbitrarily and indefinitely imprisons children under the pretext of "administrative detentions" (more than 50,000 arrests and nearly 12,000 imprisonments between 1967 and 2020 according to the Association France Palestine Solidarité, and 200 Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons to date according to the NGO Addameer)

A state that indiscriminately bombs civilians, including children, and whose leaders call for wiping Palestinian villages off the map.

A state that has deprived 1 million children of the most basic resources for seventeen years. A state that commits the crime of apartheid (according to Amnesty International), stripping Palestinians of their rights based on their ethnic origin.

A state that has recently admitted to sterilizing its populations from Ethiopia during the 1980s by imposing the use of Depo-Provera.

While our media and institutions mention "Israel's right to defend itself," they rarely mention the blockade that the Israeli state has imposed on the inhabitants of Gaza for seventeen years, despite multiple condemnations from the UN, as well as the military occupation at the root of the current conflict. Every country must respect international law. It is with weariness that we note the repeated exceptions granted to the Israeli state, which has violated international law hundreds of times since 1948, without any consequences.

It is with strength that we denounce the criminal amalgamation that chooses not to dissociate Palestinian civilians from Hamas (an organisation classified as a terrorist group by the EU). We also denounce discourses that claim the coexistence problem is linked to the Muslim religion and Islamism: the indecent treatment suffered by Christians in Palestine shows that Israel's problem with this people is linked to colonialism and not to religious conflict.

We denounce with anger and indignation the aggressive colonization that Palestine is experiencing with impunity, with the complicity of our government. We condemn the flood of bombs on the territory that has become Gaza.

We want to denounce the very idea of selective empathy, which would seek to hierarchize the value of life among individuals based on their ethnic origin. We denounce the unbearable silence, even complicity, of our politicians and, more broadly, the international community.

We call for the accountability of our male and female politicians in the face of these injustices, and specifically call on institutions, organizations, and personalities in the world of the arts that have welcomed the expression of diasporic trajectories and experiences within their spaces to use their structures and platforms as places for discussion and genuine questioning of the injustices we witness.

We, artists, authors, workers in the arts, call for a collective mobilization to support the effort of solidarity towards occupied Palestine: first, it is urgent to declare a ceasefire. We demand the reopening of passages to Gaza and the resumption of supplies of water, food, fuel, electricity, internet, care, and medication, as well as the lifting of the Gaza blockade (illegal according to international law).

Then, it is essential to put a stop to the colonial policy of the Israeli state and to do justice to the Palestinian people, deprived of their rights for too long. Only by demanding that the State of Israel respect international law and the fundamental rights of Palestinians, and at the very least the 1947 partition plan, do we have a chance for this situation to ease. This should not be done by expelling the inhabitants of Gaza but simply by respecting their right of return – affirmed by international law. Palestinians want and must be able to return home.

*Text modified on November 6, 2023: legal clarifications on the 1947 partition plans and UN resolutions of 1967.