Palestine players

AS theatre practitioners in Britain, we are alarmed at an attack on the Arts Council and British Council for supporting a Uk tour by a Palestinian theatre company (Mail).

Under an inflammatory title suggesting that Uk taxpayers are funding a ‘pro-terrorist’ play appear the ‘concerns’ of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an organisation with a shocking record of acting to suppress cultural and academic events which explore the bitter realities of Palestinian existence. Only last month the University of Southampton succumbed to demonisation and banned an academic conference on the legal status of Israel.

People who haven’t seen freedom Theatre’s play The Siege can’t claim that it ‘promotes terrorism’.

Not for the first time, Palestinian voices are in danger of being drowned out by a vociferous pro-Israel lobby that smears all Palestinians as terrorists and anti-Semites.

This lobby wants us to believe British theatregoers cannot be trusted to make their own judgment.

The West Bank, where the freedom Theatre is based, has been under illegal Israeli military occupation since 1967. British playwright howard Brenton writes of the forthcoming tour: ‘This is real political theatre, performed out of the both terrible and inspiring experience of a struggle for freedom and justice.’ CARYL CHURCHILL, DOMINIC COOKE, APRIL de ANGELIS, DAVID EDGAR, LUCY KIRKWOOD, DAVID LAN,

MIRIAM MARGOLYES, PAUL MAYERSBERG, MAXINE PEAKE, MARK RYLANCE, JENNIE STOLLER, MARK THOMAS and SAMUEL WEST, Artists for Palestine UK, Woodford Green, Essex.