Suleiman withdraws from the cultural boycott of Israel

Again, it is the buoyant Jews Sans Frontières who was among the first to break the news about the withdrawal of Palestinian director Elia Suleiman from the cultural boycott of Israel.

I was surprised. I saw Suleiman's most celebrated movie 'Divine Intervention' at the Festival Nouveau Cinema Nouveaux Media in Montreal few years ago and thought that it was a good movie. I also get the chance to glance at the director, Mr. Suleiman, who was in Montreal that night promoting the movie. The theater was full. The movie got a good reception in Montreal and it has already won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Walking out of the theater, Suleiman looked relaxed, at ease with fame. What struck me in him was that he looked nonchalant and dandy. He is actually quite good looking. I wondered how can soemone be a dandy and a palestinian living in Ramallah ? One might want to read the definition of 'Dandy' in Wikipedia which alludes to a dandy as a 'class traitor'. And Suleiman is a traitor, a special kind of traitor. Not that everyone should support the boycott of Israel, people are entitled to their opinions and positions. I think what is particular in Suleiman's position is that he signed the boycott not long ago in August at the height of the Israeli agression of Lebanon and then wrote a letter to retract two months later accusing those who boycott of not knowing what they do and hysterically starting his letter by citing Karl Kraus, an Austrian writer and satirist known for his satirist critique of German and Austrian culture and politics:''Lord, forgive them, for they know what they do! ''

Suleiman's main argument is that the boycott is hurting Isareli artists who speak against their state's policies. However, Suleiman didn't name these artists and didn't say in which way the two month old boycott hurted them. He then lead a charge, in the letter, against those who boycott, accusing them of 'witch hunt'. This is a bizarre and contradictory claim since if there is really a witch hunt going on the boycott must then be working only against those who are hostile while protecting Israeli artists who voice their protests against Israel's policies in the occupied territories, contrary to what Suleiman pretends initially.

He then goes on to speak about Art and Humanity...

I wonder how can we separate Art from our daily lives and elevate it beyond the lives of Palestinian children ? I wonder: didn't Suleiman know what a boycott is before committing himself to one ? I wonder didn't he know that the boycott was signed at the darkest hours of the history of his people, and there are more to come, at a time when the international community was turning its back on the Palestinians and the Lebanese, at a time the US secretary of state was calling the tragedy of Lebanon the 'birth pangs of the middle east' ?


I wonder what Suleiman or what any dandy individualist libertarian know about Humanity ? The pursuit of individual desires is not a moral pursuit, it is embedded in an individuality which can be sometimes divorced from humanity. There is no way that individualism can become a moral theory and replace humanism. An animal is an individual as long as it is a separate organism acting by itself without the influence of other organisms. Does this definition replace the notion of Humanity ? An individual freedom should be in harmony with the rest of society and of other individuals; this is where our humanity stands, between us and others. I think we don't know what the word 'Humanism'' means nowadays because we counfound the word with 'individualism'. Humanism is more encompassing than individualism. It elevates the individual to universal values, not common values as Suleiman writes in his dissent letter because he confuses the common values of two communities with universal values. Universal values have nothing to do wth specific values, they are above all other values. Humanity is more than two communities and it is the only way by which an individual can achieve his self emancipation, outside his own community and other communities, by reaching to higher values. These higher values are stated in the universal declaration of Human rights.

How can Suleiman proclaims that he is acting in a non sectarian way while his only motivation for resigning from the boycott campaign seems to be to distinguish himself from his community by openly defining himself against it ? (the Kraus citation is very emblematic in my opinion) .

And I would like to compare here Suleiman's position to that of Aki Kaurismaki, the artist of Humanity and the humanity of the Arts he represents and probably all the Arts. Here is an artist, another Cannes darling, who refused to come to the ceremony of the oscars in 2002 to promote his nominated movie 'The man without a past' because of Georges Bush's and America's war in Afghanistan. This was before the Iraq war. This year, Kaurismaki asked the Finnish academy to withdraw his movie 'Lights in the dusk' from the Oscar list , probably for the same reasons, which are still the same but amplified with what is happening in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. I have written a post abot Kaurismaki and the related issue.

Here is an artist who is boycotting himself and not afraid to do so in the name of Justice and individual conscience against individual desires and against opression, all kinds of opression. Here is an artist who elevates the Arts to the level of humanity and make them thrive honorably, not on the expanses of the lives of others being Palestinians, Lebanese or Iraqi children or in the name of some obscure individualistic cultural dandyism proclaimed as a moral value.

Artists like Kaurismaki consider their art as a form of human achievement, an achievement for all humanity and for the sake of humanity, not as a form of personal achievement. This is where Palestinian and Israeli artists should look in order to communicate, at higher human values and not common values for both communities because, not to be cynical, there is nothing common between Palestinian artists and Israeli artists when one looks at the conditions of both people and both homelands, if one can call the actual Palestinian territories a 'Homeland'.

Suleiman's Art can never reach Kaurismaki's because it is an Art constrained by the considerations of an individual preoccupied by distinguishing himself from his community even when this community has come to symbolise by its suffering the universal condition of challenged humanity. Suleiman's Art is no universal Art, it is an Art with boundaries, the boundaries of Suleiman's self.

P.S. Read here my argument for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel , here my update on the different boycotts of Israel and here a guide to an economic boycott of Israel (it is in Arabic but if you go through the document you will find the names of the companies in English).