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ART WORLD TAKES THE STAGE TO DEFEND A PALESTINIAN THEATER  
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Dana Mills
February 15, 2024
972 Magazine
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_ After an unprecedented response to Israel’s latest raid on
Jenin's Freedom Theatre, there will be no going back to show business
as usual. _

Rally in solidarity with Jenin's Freedom Theatre in New York, January
15, 2024, photo: Ken Schles

 

In the early hours of Dec. 13, Israeli forces raided the offices of
the Freedom Theatre, a world-renowned bastion of artistic expression
in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The soldiers ransacked the
building and defaced it
[[link removed]] with
graffiti bearing Jewish symbols, before violently abducting three
members of the theater’s community from their homes: artistic
director Ahmed Tobasi, producer Mustafa Sheta, and a graduate of the
theater’s performing arts program, Jamal Abu Joas. 

Tobasi was released the next day; Abu Joas a week later. Sheta,
however, was sentenced to six months in administrative detention — a
form of arrest that enables Israel to put anyone it deems a security
risk behind bars for an indefinite period, without due process. Sheta,
who has joined nearly 3,500
[[link removed]] Palestinian administrative
detainees in Israeli prisons, was able to speak with his lawyer for
only 10 minutes before the lawyer appeared in a closed military
trial. 

While this attack comes in the context of a brutal crackdown
[[link removed]] across the West
Bank since the start of the Gaza war, it also represents the latest
escalation in Israel’s decades-long persecution against the
Palestinian cultural sphere in general, and Jenin’s Freedom Theatre
in particular. This time, however, Israel’s aggression has not gone
unchallenged, and the response from the global artistic community in
solidarity with the theater has been unprecedented.

A TARGETED ASSAULT ON PALESTINIAN CULTURE

Founded during the First Intifada as the Stone Theatre by Arna
Mer-Khamis, the Israeli army destroyed the theater’s original
building during its siege of Jenin amid the Second Intifada. In 2006,
Arna’s son, Juliano, re-opened the theater in its current venue —
a cultural center in the Jenin refugee camp — with Zakaria Zubeidi.
Three years later, an unknown individual threw Molotov cocktails at
the building while it was empty, and in 2011, a masked gunman killed
Juliano as he left the theater.

The Freedom Theatre sees its work as intertwined with the Palestinian
struggle for liberation and refuses to ignore
[[link removed]] decades of Israeli
apartheid, colonization, and military occupation. It provides a space
for young people in particular to create a political imaginary
different from their daily reality, steeped as it is in pervasive
dehumanization, oppression, and violence. It enables them to cultivate
a vision of equality and freedom and to act it out, making the
imagined tangible. It is, in short, a venue of resistance, which is
why the theater has been such a frequent target of Israeli attacks
over the years.

[Ahmad Tobasi, artistic director of The Freedom Theater and actor,
performing his play 'And Here I Am' (The Freedom Theater)]
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Ahmad Tobasi, artistic director of The Freedom Theater and actor,
performing his play 'And Here I Am' (The Freedom Theater)
Ahmed Tobasi, artistic director of the Freedom Theatre, performing his
play ‘And Here I Am.’ (Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)

Since its inception, the Freedom Theatre has staged over 25 different
plays to tens of thousands of people in Jenin and beyond, including
through successful international tours. Its repertoire is overtly
political, allowing transformative processes to emerge from the
creative process itself. 

Among the plays presented in the theater are George Orwell’s
“Animal Farm,” Ghassan Kanafani’s “Men in the Sun,” Lewis
Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Harold Pinter’s “The
Caretaker,” and original plays such as “Fragments of Palestine,”
“Power/Poison,” “Return to Palestine,” “The Siege,” and
“Suicide Note from Palestine.” The theater also offers workshops
and educational activities for children.  

The plays are so powerfully political in part because the theater
cannot be separated from its violent surroundings. Jenin has long been
a locus of Israeli oppression, but in the past few years it has come
to witness military raids on an almost weekly basis. Since October 7,
these raids have further intensified, with Israeli forces killing 90
Palestinians [[link removed]] in Jenin alone over the
past four months. 

The December arrests of three members of the Freedom Theatre community
thus took place in a dual context: the violence regularly inflicted on
Jenin, and the targeted assault on Palestinian culture since the war
on Gaza began — a campaign that has included the destruction of an
iconic bookstore [[link removed]],
Gaza’s main library
[[link removed]],
the Central Archive Building
[[link removed]],
and the Rashad al-Shawwa Historical Cultural Centre
[[link removed]].
These attacks have been read through the lens of cultural genocide
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culture, language, and religion of a specific group.

[Security camera footage shows Israeli troops outside the Freedom
Theatre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, December 13, 2023.
(Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)]
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Security camera footage shows Israeli troops outside the Freedom
Theatre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, December 13, 2023.
(Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)
Security camera footage shows Israeli troops outside the Freedom
Theatre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, December 13, 2023.
(Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)

Yet Israel’s apparent goal of silencing Palestinian cultural critics
has backfired. With much of the world aghast at Israel’s brutality
in the context of the war on Gaza, the effect of its latest attack on
the Freedom Theatre has been to raise the theater’s international
profile even higher. After decades of silence in the face of
apartheid, occupation, and daily violence experienced by Palestinians,
global public discourse and opinion seem to be decisively shifting. 

Across the world, public figures are speaking out against Israeli
aggression, university campuses are consumed by debates on the issue,
and marches of solidarity with Gaza are attracting record numbers of
people. There has also been a seismic shift in the world’s
understanding of how specific sectors of Palestinian life face routine
harassment, dehumanization, and a structural denial of human rights.
One such sector, often overlooked but crucially important, is
performance arts. 

SOLIDARITY FROM THE STAGE TO THE STREETS 

Although the Freedom Theatre’s international solidarity networks
have been robust for many years, this latest assault on the theater
— occurring as it did in the context of Israel’s genocidal
aggression in Gaza — generated an unprecedented response from the
global artistic community. Open letters
[[link removed]] garnered
hundreds of signatories from industry professionals, while major
players like PEN America have released solidarity statements
[[link removed]].

In New York, the theater and performing arts community gathered
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Dec. 19 for a rapid response rally, standing in solidarity with the
Freedom Theatre and with Palestine more generally in protest of the
continued detention of the theater’s members. The rally featured a
lineup of speakers who shared personal remarks and performances,
including excerpts read from the Freedom Theatre’s “The
Revolution’s Promise.” 

[Rally in solidarity with Jenin's Freedom Theatre in New York,
January 15, 2024. (Ash Marinaccio)]
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Rally in solidarity with Jenin's Freedom Theatre in New York, January
15, 2024. (Ash Marinaccio)
Rally in solidarity with Jenin’s Freedom Theatre in New York,
January 15, 2024. (Ash Marinaccio)

Other actions in solidarity with the theater took place in France
[[link removed]], Scotland
[[link removed]], Mexico
[[link removed]], Italy
[[link removed]], South
Africa [[link removed]], Belgium
[[link removed]], Norway
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and Sweden
[[link removed]].
In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, more than 1,000 leading lights
[[link removed]] in
the theater world, including such luminaries as Caryl Churchill,
Maxine Peake, Vicky Featherstone, and Dominic Cooke, called for
[[link removed]] the
immediate release of Sheta, Abu Joas, and other residents of Jenin
who were detained during Israel’s Dec. 13 raid. 

Among a global sweep of solidarity with the Freedom Theatre, UK
culture workers have come out firing against the silencing of support
for Palestinians within their industry. A new collective
named Cultural Workers Against Genocide
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critiqued arts organizations in the UK for their hypocrisy, noting
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“expressions of solidarity readily offered to other peoples facing
brutal oppression have not been extended to Palestinians.”_ _

Paul W. Flemming, general secretary of Equity
[[link removed]], the UK’s performing arts and
entertainment union, told +972 that the union had sent funds to the
Freedom Theatre in the wake of the attack. “Members expect their
union to take the same approach in Palestine and Israel as we’ve
taken over Ukraine and Russia — supporting artists and trades
unionists to survive and fight for peace, dignity, and freedom of
expression for artists, irrespective of nationality or background,”
he said.

On Nov. 29, scores of workers in the culture sector in London staged
a walk-out
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with the support
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the Freedom Theatre, over the silence of cultural institutions and
organizations regarding violence in Palestine. The following
day, another open letter
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published — signed by luminaries in the UK including Olivia Coleman,
Juliette Stevenson, and Hassan Abdulrazzak — which stated: “Far
from supporting our calls for an end to the violence, many cultural
institutions in Western countries are systematically repressing,
silencing and stigmatizing Palestinian voices and perspectives.”

[Graffiti of Jewish symbols sprayed by Israeli soldiers during a raid
of the Freedom Theatre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin,
December 13, 2023. (Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)]
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Graffiti of Jewish symbols sprayed by Israeli soldiers during a raid
of the Freedom Theatre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin,
December 13, 2023. (Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)
Graffiti of Jewish symbols sprayed by Israeli soldiers during a raid
of the Freedom Theatre in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin,
December 13, 2023. (Courtesy of the Freedom Theatre)

There has also been on-stage solidarity. On Nov. 29, the International
Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the Ramallah-based
Ashtar Theatre called on theater companies
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the world to read out the Gaza Monologues
[[link removed]]. Narrated by 33 young people in
2010, following Israel’s first war on the Strip after withdrawing
its settlers and soldiers, the play seeks to bring the voices of
Gaza’s young people to the world. 

The words written [[link removed]] back then echo
painfully today: “I dream of having ONE day of safety, I’m sure
the world is too busy to remember our situation; six years have passed
since we wrote our monologues and we are still under siege … When
can we live in peace like the rest of the World?” Companies around
the world responded to Ashtar Theatre’s call, including in several
venues in the United States, South Africa, and across South Asia and
the Middle East.

These solidarity campaigns show that there is a growing understanding
of the responsibility and commitment of theater makers to their
comrades in Palestine — a development that is especially significant
in the context of the deliberate attempts to silence Palestinian
voices within the culture sector. In October, for example, the
Frankfurt Book Fair hastily canceled
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award ceremony for Adania Shibli simply because she is Palestinian.
The blowback to that decision, combined with the campaigns in the
theater world, suggest a fundamentally new path forward for the arts
community.

SUBVERSION AND LIBERATION

As the world rallies around the Palestinian cause, the attack on the
theater and the solidarity campaigns that this provoked exemplify our
current moment: the cruelty that Israeli apartheid brings to the
everyday lives of Palestinians, but also the change in how the world
reacts to this dehumanization.

[Rally in solidarity with Jenin's Freedom Theatre in New York,
January 15, 2024. (Ken Schles)]
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Rally in solidarity with Jenin's Freedom Theatre in New York, January
15, 2024. (Ken Schles)
Rally in solidarity with Jenin’s Freedom Theatre in New York,
January 15, 2024. (Ken Schles)

Two months after the raid on Jenin’s Freedom Theatre, its producer
Mustafa Sheta remains in administrative detention. But it is clear the
global arts community is not returning to (show) business as usual,
and will continue to fight for Palestinian freedom. The arts have
always been a powerful mechanism of subversion and liberation, which
is precisely why Israel is cracking down on Palestinian cultural life.

On Feb. 13, it was announced
[[link removed].] that
the Freedom Theater has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The
theater responded
[[link removed]]:
“The Freedom Theatre is an artistic movement made possible by the
collective effect of thousands of people, starting from Jenin Refugee
Camp in Palestine and rippling across the world.”

_Dana Mills is a writer, activist, dancer, and the +972/ Local Call
resource development manager. She is the author of Dance and
Politics: Moving beyond Boundaries (2016), Rosa Luxemburg (2020),
and Dance and Activism (2021). Her fourth book, a collection of
essays about and against war, is forthcoming in 2024 with Five Leaves
Press._

_+972 Magazine is an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a
group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists. Founded in 2010, our
mission is to provide in-depth reporting, analysis, and opinions from
the ground in Israel-Palestine. The name of the site is derived from
the telephone country code that can be used to dial throughout
Israel-Palestine._

_Our core values are a commitment to equity, justice, and freedom of
information. We believe in accurate and fair journalism that
spotlights the people and communities working to oppose occupation and
apartheid, and that showcases perspectives often overlooked or
marginalized in mainstream narratives._

* Palestinians
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* theater
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* Solidarity
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