A Night at the Opera (video)

Following on from my previous post, here's footage of the anti-Batsheva stunt in Paris:

 The background music to the video is wonderfully soothing, anyhow.

"Complicité avec les Sionistes Colonisateurs": In Paris, bigots target Batsheva

Tweet by head of B'nai B'rith France

The wonderful Israeli dance company Batsheva is appearing at l'Opéra Garnier de Paris until 9th January, delighting audiences with their performance.

On hand on opening night was a crowd of Israel-demonisers, demonstrating outside the theatre.  Some, inside, managed briefly to disrupt other people's pleasure.

Read about it (in French) here; brief video of the demo outside the theatre, and the queues waiting to watch Batsheva, at source.

Rather read about it in English?

Yep, so would I:

 'A few dozen pro-Palestinian activists tried to disrupt a performance by the Batsheva Israeli dance company in Paris on Tuesday night.

Several dozen protesters held a demonstration outside the Opéra de Paris, but a number of pro-Palestinian activists managed to get inside where they draped Palestinian flags and shouted anti-Israel slogans.

A number of pro-Palestinian activist groups released a statement prior to the performance calling for it's members to demonstrate against it....

Despite security checks, several protesters wearing keffiyehs (an Arabic headdress) and waving Palestinian flags called for a boycott of Israel, shouting "a racist gang in the Opéra Garnier", "We do not dance with apartheid" and "murderer Israel, Palestine will conquer." The demonstrators also accused the Paris Opera of "complicity with the Zionist colonizers."....

The demonstrators were quickly removed the auditorium by security following the disturbance, allowing the show to begin.' 

Report in full here

(If I spot any footage I'll post it here)  Update: see my next post for video.

"Boycott Batsheva!": Anti-Israel fanatics in Kiwiland spew their bile (video)

The Batsheva Dance Company has been visiting New Zealand (see this nice review).

The video below shows a bunch of contemptible fanatics outside the theatre  in Wellington, screaming "Boycott Batsheva!" and other spiteful slogans in the Israel delegitimisers' lexicon.

Hear them talk of the audience's "genocide money" and watch them taunt a dignified group of pro-Israel demonstrators with claims that that the Israeli flags the latter wave are "bloodstained" and that Israel will soon be consigned to the "dustbin of history".

There's little doubt that these sickening fanatics, with their spiteful slogans and support of the so-called "right of return", are lusting for the demise of the Israeli State.

"Blood On Your Hands!": Protesting Batsheva & Gaza in Old London Town

Here are scenes from outside Sadler's Wells last evening, when a seething raucous mob of usual suspects screamed intimidatory invective at people arriving to watch the Batsheva Dance Company.  "Shame on you!" yells the mob.  "Blood on your hands!"

And here are hardline far leftists and their predictable if incongruous bedfellows demonstrating outside the Embassy a few days ago against Israel's right to defend itself from Hamas terror strikes.

(A few as-a-Jews here, folks.)

Towards the end of the video a strident female voice condemns the  –  wait for it!  –  pro-Israel bias of the BBC (as satirical magazine Private Eye is fond of saying of statements that seem to lack factual basis: "Shome mishtake surely?").

Update: Richard Millett's video shows what the audience thought of Batsheva last evening!

"Old Zionist Biddy Tries To Cover Her Face ..." (video)

Whoever would have thought it?  The oh-so-progressive leftists who (see my post here) behaved so intimidatingly in Bradford last week when Batsheva came to town, showing a little ageist misogyny in labelling a woman of mature years an "old biddy".  Old, maybe.  Or old-ish.  But "biddy"? Surely that's a term that, like derogatory slang for members of ethnic minorities, should be consigned to the lexicographer's dustbin.
Ah, but what can one expect from these fanatics who use the proud term Zionist as one of derision?
This particular "old biddy" was outside (and hopefully inside) Bradford's Alhambra Theatre during Batsheva's performance there.  Bravely, she took a souvenir or two of the baying mob with her mobile phone, as they loudly chanted abuse at her and at people leaving the theatre.
And she did not try to cover her face.

(btw, I wonder how that police investigation into slashed tyres of cars parked near the theatre that evening is going.)

Batsheva In Brighton: BDS mob outshouted by counter-protesters

Here's a BDSer's brief mobile phone  footage of yesterday's outdoor demo against Israeli dance troupe Batsheva, performing at the Brighton Dome Concert Hall.

Well-known Zionist activist Jonathan Hoffman notes here :

"There were only 4 interruptions of Batsheva's brilliant performance last night and all the cultural hooligans were loudly booed and yanked out onto the street commendably quickly by the security staff...."

That, of course, is four interruptions too many, and it's highly regrettable that a planned Saturday night performance at the same venue was cancelled owing to fears regarding security, thus depriving many Orthodox Jews unable to attend last night's performance from seeing it after Shabbat. 

But although counter-demonstrations are frowned upon and discouraged by many, it's not without satisfaction to read (via J.H.) in Brighton's local newspaper, the Argus, that

"A large group of pro-Israel supporters gatecrashed a planned protest outside the Brighton Dome last night. Pro-Palestinian campaigners had arranged to picket the performance of controversial dance group the Batsheva ensemble. But unknown to them, their opposite numbers had arranged a counter-demo, outnumbering the original protest. Ann Hallam from the Brighton Palestine Solidarity group said "We are boycotting the group's performance because they are part of Brand Israel. They are a state-funded group which is sent around the world to portray Israel as a cultured and vibrant place while ignoring the atrocities and persecution of the Palestinians."

And 60-70 pro-Israel supporters outshouted the 40-50 strong opposed as a line of police officers watched."

(On another note entirely: within the past hour I've received an e-mail from a friend which runs in part: "We've just returned from a conference on Reconciliation at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It was boycotted by the Palestinians!"  More irony.)

"Batsheva, You Can't Hide, We Charge You With Apartheid!": BDS Bullies in Bradford (videos)

In Bradford, long a proud and prosperous centre of the British woollen industry, a cloth-capped "comrade" and assorted friends chant their hatred against Israel outside the Alhambra Theatre (according to this report, the protesters were mainly "church people"; the dancers were disrupted several times; some parked cars of audience members had their tyres punctured...):

Support for the demo from a passing motorist or two:

More chanting, from a bunch of local Asian youngsters who stayed on after the oldster in the cloth cap and his comrades had left for their nightcaps:

Frenzied Scottish Voices Screeching Hatred Towards Batsheva & Israel (video)

This cacophony of venomous intimidatory chanting outside Edinburgh's Festival Theatre when the Batsheva Dance Company performed there at the end of last month is truly repulsive. On hand to maintain the rage is the demagogic Mick Napier of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, whose bitter invective against Batsheva is frankly sickening:

"Your Tickets Are Covered In Palestinian Blood!": Protesting Batsheva in Manchester (video)

Here are more Israel-bashing lefties and their allies libelling Israel outside Manchester's Lowry Theatre on Friday, 2nd November.  This squalid mean-spirited demonstration against the Batsheva Dance Company was called by Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and supported by the Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition.

Read the spin in Britain's Communist rag here

BoycottIsraelNetwork Footage Of The Batsheva Disruption (video)

An outfit calling itself BoycottIsraelNetwork has uploaded this footage of the outrageous scenes outside and inside the Edinburgh theatre on the opening night of the Batsheva Dance Company's performance there.

There's manic screeching of the blood libel, the burning of tickets, and a female activist gloatingly telling a wildly receptive mob of the impact of the disruptions upon the audience...

Writes the uploader:

'Boycott campaigners turned the empty Zionist slogan "Culture unites, Boycotts Divide" totally on its head in Edinburgh last weekend, drawing some of Scotland's best known cultural figures, many theatre--goers and Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Israel's world-renowned Batsheva dance company, into public dialogue about its role as a state-funded "cultural ambassador."'

And here's a BBC2Newsnight report uploaded by BDS stalwart Alex Seymour:

Poetic Li[n]es

It's been quite a fortnight for lady poets intent on waxing devilishly lyrical about Israel.

Taking as her Muse that map of 1700 that never was (the map that I blogged about here and which is still being touted as the real McCoy on anti-Israel websites!) Palestinian poet Samah Sabawi, who was the keynote speaker at the BDS Conference in Byron Bay, has composed lines beginning:

"A word on a map

Offends

A reminder of

An original sin

Ethnic cleansing

People wiped off 

Like letters

Written in the sand ...."

On Al Quds Day in London Yemeni poet Sanasino railed thus against "the Zionist entity":

In an article published on the Sunday following the outrageous harassment of patrons and disruptions to the Batsheva Dance Company's performance at Edinburgh's Playhouse Theatre (thuggishness so graphically depicted here), Scotland's National Poet and avowed "liberal" Liz Lochhead chose the medium of prose to reiterate her support of BDS:

"I have always been the kind of liberal who believes in total artistic and intellectual freedom and the self-evident value of free cultural exchange – even naïve enough to think art and politics don't, and shouldn't, mix.

Yet I was glad to join other Scottish artists and writers in signing a letter protesting the appearance of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company at the Edinburgh International Festival this week. Why? Because I have been profoundly changed by what I witnessed and experienced first hand during a short trip with a few student friends and some other poets and singers to Palestine this June.

We started off staying for a few nights as guests in Aida Camp in Bethlehem. This meant-to-be-temporary refugee camp of about 4000 people, some 650or so families, is exactly as old as me (and I'm 64) – having been established under a terrified flurry of canvas tents in 1948 as the grandparents and parents of the present generation either fled for their lives or were, at best, forcibly displaced from their homes and villages as the State of Israel was created...

 Israel denies human rights to Palestinians. Denies that they are human beings at all....

....We must use all means. Including protesting at a dance company. Including total cultural and academic boycott."

Among the rejoinders in the comments section of the newspaper website where the above appears are these:

[First]:"The Aida camp is completely within Area A, meaning that it is under the full administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority. It is under full Arab rule. The PA, with the funds it receives from the West, could choose to improve the camp, or build an adjacent town to move the residents there.

But it refuses to do so.

And the reason is because this camp, as well as all the other camps in the West Bank and Gaza, are propaganda tools, for useful idiots like Liz Lochhead to visit on carefully supervised dog-and-pony shows so she can write articles like this one bashing Israel. But Israel couldn't fix the camp if it wanted to. It is not allowed to!

Not one camp under PA or Hamas control has been dismantled since Oslo."

[Second]: "You pretend to have gone on a visit with an open mind and without an agenda; who are you kidding? Have you visited Sderot? No, because the Isreali [sic] children of are non[e] of your concern. It is not your concern that these children of Sderot have started the school year while rockets from Gaza keep landing in south Israel every day, inspite of Hamas signing a truce, while Israel has not yet responded to these attacks; instead it spent tens of millions of dollars on shelters in Sderot to allow the children there to go to school. Your description of the overall conditions in Gaza is false. The conditions in Gaza may not match those you are used to in your native Scotland, but there are no shortages in Gaza and the local merchants there (by their own words) can get anything they want from Egypt, except that the prefer Israeli products because they are of better quality. Why don't you tell your readers that Palestinians get more foreign aid per capita than any other group in the world? Why don't you tell your readers that a survey just found that there are 600 milionair[e]s in Gaza?...."

 [Third]: 'As Liz Lochhead proudly stands shoulder to shoulder with anti-Israel activists of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the nearest thing Edinburgh gets to Nazi-style Brown Shirts, she conveniently omits to tell us about their anti-Semitic members that they "keep under control" or their leader's prized Hezbullah flag....

"I saw someone in this crowd with a Hizbullah flag....I wish I had brought mine!"- Mick Napier....

It's time tae "send her homeward tae think again"!'

"See You At Sadler's Wells!": Anti-Israel Demagogue Promises Batsheva "The Welcome They Deserve" (video) (with updates)

In customary demogogic style, Mick Napier, who heads the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, denounces the Balfour Declaration and the resulting Zionist Entity, where, he tells a hugely receptive crowd on Al Quds Day, "the racism, the torture, is deep and long-lasting," and he proclaims "the criminals can be defeated!". "Israel's name is already dark and horrible" he cries, vowing that it will be made "even worse".  To acclaim, he screams that Israel's young people should be encouraged to leave the country, and that when the Batsheva Dance Company visits Edinburgh this week he and his cohorts will give it "the welcome it deserves." (See this report on that "welcome" last evening, and see below for an account by one of the disrupters.)  He foreshadows the same when Batsheva performs in London at the end of November: "See you at Sadler's Wells!"

 
As for the canard that "Israel is for the white man," well, it's not, of course.  Regarding that infamous quotation (wrongly) attributed to the Interior Minister (who was merely quotiing the views of some Sudanese refugees), Napier and friends should read this.

Of the disruptions to last night's Edinburgh performance, Zionist Federation stalwart Jonathan Hoffman says:

"The majority of the Edinburgh audience showed its disgust at these cultural terrorists by loudly applauding Batsheva. Hopefully the protesters were arrested for the offence of aggravated trespass - or whatever is the equivalent in Scottish law. The cultural terrorists are always the same people which shows that the Israel-haters are not persuading anyone. It takes a very special brand of ill-mannered coward to interrupt an arts event for which the audience has paid good money"

Update: Hat tip to reader Shirlee for finding this account of the disruption by Shin Kicker, one of those whom Jonathan Hoffman aptly refers to as "cultural terrorists":

"The 30th August was the opening night for the Israeli state-sponsored Batsheva dance group at the Edinburgh Festival....

Meanwhile outside on Leith Walk friends and allies gathered on the street for Palestine as part of the 'Don't Dance with Israeli Apartheid' (DDwIA)campaign.

The 'Friends of Al-Aqsa, The 'SPSC', 'Edinburgh University SJP', Unison, 'Scottish Jews for a Just Peace' 'J-BIG' and the 'Socialist Workers Party' were among those there 250 strong. Placards, flags and banners provided a colourful spectacle.

 Passers-by were given leaflets, car horns were blown in support and the chants of "Free Palestine" echoed in Edinburgh. The wonderful singing of the 'Protest in Harmony' group lent a musical air to the gathering....

"Your ticket is covered in Palestinian blood!" was the chant that greeted patrons ....

Inside the theatre 12 activists had surreptitiously gained entrance to disrupt the show at appointed times. Outside we knew approximately when this would be and the crowd went quieter almost as if in anticipation of events taking place inside which were confirmed when a file of police officers urgently entered the theatre.

And so the first group came out to rousing cheers and a rapturous ovation. They had done their job and as Kate described to the throng “The lights went out, the dancing stopped” and not for the first time this evening. Pete spoke of the “aircraft carrier for the U.S in the Middle-East” that is the Israeli state, part of an "Imperial Alliance" serving western interests at the expense of the Palestinians.

 The chanting hardly stopped for the three hours that the 'DDwIA' protest lasted and was only interrupted by cheers for the activists who were ejected and appeared triumphantly at the front door and welcomed like movie stars in a Leicester Square première...."

Read all of Shin Kicker's account here

Here' a relevant video that predates the disruption; explains the uploader:

'On August 14th the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign picketed the Scottish Parliament's "Culture Summit" in protest against the Israeli suppression of Palestinian culture, and the invitation of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Group to the Edinburgh Festival.

Following its recent tour of the OPT [sic; to judge by the PSC's logo this means all of Israel] the San Ghan'ni group joined us to sing songs of freedom and resistance.'

And another, featuring cameo appearances from Napier:

 If I find any videos of the disruption I'll post them here.
Update:
Go to Richard Millett's blog here to see the ferals in action 

 For more on Batsheva see here and here

"Pretty" Batsheva Faces Ugly BDS, But The Dire Plight Of Gaza's Christians Is Ignored

The acclaimed Batsheva Dance Company is due to perform at the Edinburgh Playhouse from 30 August to 1 September as part of the Edinburgh International Festival.

But inevitably the usual suspects have mobilised against the visit – "Don't Dance With Israeli Apartheid" is the name of a Facebook page, for example.

On the website of the Edinburgh Festival an anti-Israel activist writes 

"Batsheva is the pretty face of the Israeli regime - heavily funded by the state, it is a major Israeli tourist attraction and acts a 'cultural ambassador' for Israel. Batsheva is also supported by international 'friends of Batsheva' many of whom are ardent supporters of Israel. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel identifies Batsheva as a boycott target, so the Edinburgh International Festival is breaking the call of Palestinian civil society for solidarity action while helping to gloss over Israeli apartheid."

What a gossamer-thin indictment.  What a gossamer-thin indication of prejudice.

Truly, Israel has become the Jew among the nations

Meanwhile, as the Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reports, Gaza's Christians  face forced conversions and persecution, while Christians in the West appear impervious to their plight:

'"We only hear voices telling us to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise," said a Christian man living in Gaza City. "If they continue to turn a blind eye to our tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today it's happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem."

The public protest by the Christians in the Gaza Strip is a first step in the right direction. This is a move that could finally draw the attention of the international community, including Church leaders across the US, to the real problems and dangers facing Palestinian Christians.

Radical Islam, and not checkpoints or a security fence, remains the main threat to defenseless Christians not only in the Palestinians territories, but in the entire Middle East as well.'

 I hope my Methodist minister friends, who like Stephen Sizer have been busy linking to such reports as this one by Ben White, take note.