Dear Friends,

Since Tipping Point North South began, with its Film Fund, we have been committed to doing all we can in support of, and in solidarity with, those in the Palestinian struggle to free their homeland from Israel’s 75 years long occupation.

As Gaza endures extreme bombardment from Israel, the 15th largest military spender ($24bn p/a) in the world, in its war declared upon a people not even in control of their water, let alone their nationhood, we are sharing some of the thoughts and actions of some of the friends and colleagues with whom we have worked over the years.

Gaza Emergency appeals
MAP Medical Aid for Palestinians,
https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/children-in-gaza-crisis-appeal/UNICEF

In peace.

Deborah, Ho-Chih and all at TPNS.

LEILA SANSOUR, FILM-MAKER   
Leila posted this on 18/10/23

A Few Words about Gaza

Dear Friends, I would like to make it clear that I consider anyone who is currently justifying Israel’s attacks on Gaza in any way as a voice complicit in war crimes. I am writing this with a heavy heart and with a sense of moral responsibility towards a historic moment where each one of us is called upon in the most compelling of ways to take a stand. What we are witnessing today in Gaza is genocide. It cannot have any other name and it won’t enter history books by any other name. Those who know me, I hope, will vouch for me, that I don’t use such words lightly or in vain. I have seen enough brutality on the ground in Palestine but always tried to be measured. I have always tried to be a voice that calls for the best possible future for both people.

This past week, I have worked in a newsroom, watching the senseless and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. I have seen entire residential neighbourhoods flattened by Israeli air strikes, countless kids being pulled out of piles of rubble where their entire families now lay dead, injured kids comforting their last remaining younger siblings, people’s harrowing accounts of the deafening sound of human moans underneath the rubble that surrounds them from every direction, whole families wiped out. Several hospitals have now been mercilessly shelled, the last one, Al Ahli, yesterday, resulted in the death of more than 500 people. In other words- a true massacre.

But this is not why I say this is genocide. It is genocide because every bit of it is premeditated and proclaimed with staggering glee in unabashed speeches by Israeli politicians one after the other, interview after interview, statement after statement. One day, I hope to publish these online because, for as long as I shall live, I will do my very best to help every possible effort that will aim to put all those who are carrying out these atrocities and the world leaders who are supporting them in word or deed behind bars.

For those of you who have waved the Ukrainian flag against Russian attacks, so did I, should know that Russia’s barbaric and indiscriminate shelling of Bucha, Mariupol and the whole of the Ukraine has resulted in less than a third of the number of kids dead as did just one week’s shelling of Gaza. Please stop for a second and think about that.

In the past couple of years I have heard many westerners gasp at the submissive spirit of Russian citizens and the power that has brainwashed the Russian mind. Well, you might like to know that, today, thousands of Russians are lingering behind bars for daring to challenge a brutal autocratic regime. What is stopping the people of the free world to have that little smidgen of courage to at least say it as is – I think what is stopping most is just the cosiness of conformity or that little bit of inconvenience, maybe at work, among friends or on social media. So, you tell me who wins the moral race?!

We are living through the darkest of times. Now, if anyone ever wonders about “How could they ever let it happen?!”- the holocaust, slavery, all manner of witch-hunt and depraved things, don’t expect me to be surprised with you. It all happens in the most matter of fact and dullest of ways- The banality of evil is upon us. It is staring us all in the face.

JEFF HALPER, DIRECTOR ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)
https://icahd.org/2023/09/08/october-update-from-jeff-halper/

End comments (20 min video)

We’re focused on the political. We’re focused on the one state idea, of course, but how we go forward, and especially how we go forward with our Palestinian partners, is still open ended. I know, our Palestinian partners are kind of reeling from all of this as well, including those of the one democratic state campaign. So we’ll see how this all unfolds. Again, the worst is coming, which is the invasion, the ground invasion of Gaza. So we can’t really know yet how this is going to unfold, and develop. So some of those discussions we’ll have to wait… But we’re certainly in a stage of re-evaluating our political steps forward together with the Palestinians. So again, our thoughts are with the Palestinians, especially the Palestinians in Gaza, as this ground invasion approaches, read our ICAHD statement about what’s happening on our ICAHD website. We continue to be political actors committed to adjust political resolution of the situation.

ARTISTS FOR PALESTINE UK – 2000 artists sign Open Letter

Tilda Swinton, Charles Dance, Steve Coogan, Miriam Margolyes, Peter Mullan, Maxine Peake and Khalid Abdalla are among more than two thousand  people from across the arts who have signed a letter saying that: “Our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them.” The artists, including Robert del Naja and playwrights Tanika Gupta and Abbie Spallen, condemn “every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them”.

Citing Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant’s depiction of Palestinians as “human animals”, directors Michael Winterbottom, Mike Leigh and Asif Kapadia, comedians Frankie Boyle and Josie Long, authors Marina Warner, Jacqueline Rose, Gillian Slovo and Courttia Newland, and poet Anthony Anaxagorou, say Palestinians “have become people to whom almost anything can be done”. The minister had made the comments while announcing Israel’s “complete siege”, and halting supply of water, power, food and medicine to 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Visual artists Tai Shani and Oreet Ashery, Larissa Sansour, Rosalind Nashashibi, P. Staff,  Florence Peake and Georgina Starr say that, in Gaza, “Palestinians whose grandparents were forced out of their homes at the barrel of a gun [in 1948] are again being told to flee – or face collective punishment on an unimaginable scale.”

The signatories include producers, curators, writers, DJs, architects and designers who support the “global movement against the destruction of Gaza and the mass displacement of the Palestinian people”. They cite the UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs Martin Griffiths, who has said that ‘the spectre of death’ is hanging over Gaza, and call for “an immediate ceasefire and the opening of Gaza’s crossings to allow humanitarian aid to enter unhindered”.

BEFORE OCTOBER 7^TH ….. July 2023
AHMED TOBASI, FREEDOM THEATRE 
https://www.972mag.com/jenin-camp-invasion-army/

“All entrances to the camp are closed. Bombs are exploding. Bullets are being fired in all directions. Cars and roads are being bulldozed. Communication has been cut and you cannot check in on people. It’s a dire humanitarian situation — we do not know who needs help and how urgently.”

These were the words of Ahmed Tobasi, the Artistic Director of the famous Freedom Theatre, speaking to me over the phone in the midst of an Israeli military offensive in Jenin refugee camp, home to around 11,000 Palestinians, in the occupied West Bank on Monday morning. 

Late Sunday night, Israeli forces — armed with aircrafts and bulldozers — launched a major operation in the area, which is still ongoing at the time of writing. The IDF claimed that it is “striking terrorist infrastructure” in the area, and suggested that the operation may last several days. Eight Palestinians have been announced killed so far, while one Israeli soldier was reportedly lightly wounded in confrontations with Palestinian fighters inside the camp. 

BRIAN ENO, MUSICIAN. The 2014 attacks on Gaza
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/31/brian-eno-israel-palestine-gaza-ethnic-cleansing

The producer and musician Brian Eno has penned an open letter addressing the current crisis in Gaza, which heavily criticises the US government’s backing of Israel and asks the question: “Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing?”

The piece, which was published on David Byrne’s website, means Eno has joined the likes of Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, as well as as other high-profile Spanish film personalities including director Pedro Almodóvar, in condemning the recent Israeli attacks in Gaza.

His passionate plea, entitled Gaza and the Loss of Civilization, begins with an anecdote about a young Palestinian boy named Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra, who had been allegedly killed by an Israeli missile. He subsequently lambasts America’s reluctance to sign up to an UN investigation looking into possible war crimes committed by Israel.

Eno then goes on to label Israel a “ragingly racist theocracy”, and attacks the ideology behind Israeli “settler militia” who target Palestinian homes. “Most of them are not ethnic Israelis – they’re ‘right of return’ Jews from Russia and Ukraine … with the notion that they had an inviolable (God-given!) right to the land, and that ‘Arab’ equates with ‘vermin'”. Eno eventually compares America’s financial support of Israel “like sending money to the Klan.”

He ends his letter saying that “like it or not, in the eyes of most of the world, America represents ‘The West'”, and “despite all our high-handed talk about morality and democracy”, the West continues to support a war that “has no moral justification”.