We understand the economic boycott. Money talks, after all. No regime is likely to change until it is forced to, and that often means affecting the bottom line. But an educational and cultural boycott? Many feel that the arts shouldn’t be part of the worldwide BDS campaign against Israel, because intellectual exchange is important and it alienates those working inside Israel for change. But as RIHAM BARGHOUTI shows, art and politics cannot be separated in Palestine, and trying to pretend that cultural exchanges with Israel could ever be acceptable is simply ludicrous.

On a chilly New York City night, roughly 400 mostly young people crowded into the offices of the progressive publishing house, Verso Books, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dumbo.

Adalah-NY has released a video featuring eight artists who have come forward to support the cultural boycott of Israel. Since April 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has called upon intellectuals and academics worldwide to “comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid”, BDS Movement states.