Comma Press and Voices of Resilience Stand with ThirdSpace Theatre
As members of the theatre group, Voices of Resilience and Comma Press, we are appalled by the latest attack from UK Lawyers for Israel on fellow cultural organisation ThirdSpace Theatre. We see it, and call it out for what it is: a blatant attempt to shut down conversation about the atrocities being conducted in Gaza by the Israeli military, to prevent any expression of criticism of the events unfolding, or any expression of compassion for Palestinians suffering what Amnesty International has called a genocide.
As Voices of Resilience, we have seen our own work targeted and deliberately misrepresented in this way, with similar attempts to bully the Barbican into shutting down its staging of our show just a few months ago. We are pleased to say these were unsuccessful, and they shall not be successful this time either.
The accusations lodged at ThirdSpace are just the latest in a long line of systematic and coordinated attacks that intimidate venues, arts organisations, funders, lawyers, environmental campaigners and individual artists, to scare people from speaking out against this genocide.
We reject all the allegations, and in particular we reject the allegation that the use of Refaat Alareer’s poem ‘If I Must Die’ is in any way antisemitic. Refaat was a tutor, a poet and an inspiration to a whole generation of writers. He was our friend. He was our colleague in the publishing industry. He taught Israeli poems in his classroom, alongside poems from all over the world. He was not antisemitic. He was, rather, anti-Zionist. And he was forever heartbroken by the killing of his brother and his brother's family in an attack on a civilian apartment block in 2014. Refaat himself was murdered by an Israeli attack along with six members of his family on 6 December 2023. We are honoured to have known him, and we believe that his work should be shared for how it articulates the humanity, dignity and resistance of Palestinians.
We encourage others in our industry and in our cultural spaces to challenge this attempt at intimidation and silencing, and other attempts like it. We cannot and should not allow our arts and cultural spaces to become closed off from the real world. Art and politics and human rights are intertwined. Our lives and the lives of Palestinians are connected. We all have a right and a duty to stand in solidarity with one another, with Palestinians, and with anyone facing such brutality.
We are proud to stand with ThirdSpace Theatre, and we will not succumb to political intimidation against artistic expression.
