JOIN THE BDZ BOYCOTT
The Zabludowicz Art Trust exists to artwash the racist apartheid policies of the Israeli state. BDZ (Boycott Divest Zabludowicz) is a collective boycott of the Zabludowicz in all its forms, in solidarity with the struggle of Palestinian people. Join us today and help end activity of the Zabludowicz Trust and its subsidiaries, that is complicit in the state of Israel’s brutal regime. BDZ demands that the boycott be upheld until such a time as the Zabludowicz Art Trust publicly recognise the rights of Palestinians, and desist from all activities and investments supporting the state of Israel in maintaining an oppressive system of apartheid.
Click here to add your name to the boycott
Whether you are an art-worker, art lover, ancillary staff, curator, or board of a cultural institution – we need your support.
STOP ARTWASHING APARTHEID
Zabludowicz Art Trust and its subsidiaries function to artwash the Israeli state policy of racism and apartheid. The Zabudowicz Art Trust uses art and cultural activities in the UK to enhance the image of Israel. It serves to distract media attention from Israel’s ongoing oppression and destruction of Palestinians.
In 2014, Boycott Zabludowicz (BDZ) issued the call to boycott the Zabludowicz Art Trust. Until Israeli state policy changes or the organization ceases to play this role, no one should work with, for, or visit the Zabludowicz Art Trust and Collection in any of its forms.
The boycott is made in solidarity with the call from Palestinian workers and civil society BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) Movement to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law. It recognises the explicit call from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) for the boycott of the Zabludowicz Arts Trust.
Boycott Zabludowicz now has hundreds of signatories, with institutional and individual supporters from across the UK and global artworld. We need your support to help turn the tide against racism in the artworld, and to push back against wider forces of colonialism and privatisation.
WHY BOYCOTT ZABLUDOWICZ?
Zabludowicz Art Trust uses art and culture to artwash the Israeli state’s ongoing racism and violence against Palestinians. It is intimately connected to lobbying activities on behalf of the Israeli state, and to a company providing services to the Israeli Air Force. The Zabludowicz brand weaponizes culture to legitimate and reinforce the Israeli policy of apartheid.
In a period when white supremacist racism in Israel has hardened from informal to official state policy, this is an exceptionally destructive use of cultural soft power. It outstrips even the worst corporate offenders globally for its role in an explicit and ongoing policy of racism and apartheid.
Even in the increasingly privatised UK culture scene where funding is often derived from vastly exploitative and oppressive companies and private-public bodies, Zabludowicz Trust stands out because it directly serves a project of apartheid, here and now. Under Israel’s Basic Laws, “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it” [Our italics]. (The Guardian)
Here racism isn’t incidental to the state’s policies, it’s pivotal. Zabludowicz Trust exists to naturalise and normalise programmatic apartheid: help us shatter the illusion that racism is ever acceptable – whether anti-Palestinian or antisemitic!
WEAPONISED PHILANTHROPY
Poju and Anita Zabludowicz founded the Zabludowicz Collection in north London in 1994. The Zabludowicz Art Trust now includes Zabludowicz Collection, Dataa Editions, and its programme of artist residencies in Finland among other activities. Poju Zabludowicz is founder and director of Tamares Group and founder, major funder, and former director of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre BICOM. BICOM lobbies the UK government on behalf of Israel.
In 1994, Poju took over the family arms dealing business and most of the defence interests were sold. It is now controlled through Tamares Group, which has in the past invested in property built on illegal settlements of Palestinian land. Although Tamares recently sold their shares in Knafaim Holdings Ltd, who offered ‘military aircraft maintenance services’ to the Israeli Air Force via various maintenance contracts, in 2017, Tamares became the first outside investor and remains a major investor in Peter Thiel’s secretive US tech company, Palantir. According to the Palantir SEC S1 filing in 2020, Zabludowicz Trust is listed as one of the principal investors. Zabludowicz Arts Projects trustee and director Fabio Botterini De Pelosi listed as a signatory on the filing. Palantir’s technology plays a direct role in cyber security and predictive policing of Palestinians. A report by Privacy International states that since 2014 Palantir had contracts with the Israeli government. Palantir also ‘powers ICE immigration raids, the defence sector and police surveillance.’ (The Guardian). Further to this, Tamares Telecom owns the infrastructure for all of Israel and Palestine (and the wider region). It’s an area of big controversy according to UN reports. Golan Telecom and Paltel (Palestine Telecommunications) are both clients of Tamares Telecom. Obviously, surveillance is a huge issue in the occupied territories and moreover, Palestinians pay a premium for any services they do get, due the monopoly power of Israeli companies with cables and other telecommunications infrastructure are currently embargoed for the occupied territories. The Coalition of Civilized Demand for Fair Palestinian Telecom Sector (‘Bekfi ya shrikat alitisalat’ – Enough Communication Companies) is a movement which was established to demand fair competition in the Telecom sector in Palestine and to defend the economic rights of Palestinians. The movement advocates against the continuous rise in telecommunication costs and Paltel Telecommunications Group’s monopoly over the industry in Palestine.
Today Zabludowicz Art Trust, of which the Collection is part, has been whitewashing apartheid for nearly three decades. Collectively, these institutions function to divert attention from its founders’ and beneficiaries’ less palatable activities in the UK and overseas while doing propaganda work for Israel’s most unacceptable policies. Structural and physical violence against Palestinians disappears behind a philanthropic cultural mission, and art is turned into artwash.
FIGHT BACK AGAINST APARTHEID – SUPPORT THE BOYCOTT!
We ask everyone – artists, art-goers, academics and cultural workers, curators, administrators and employees of art institutions – to join us.
To sign the boycott, contact BDZ at bdzgrp@riseup.net or click here.
All art, film, performance, writing, workshops, masterclasses, etc. conducted under the Zabludowicz Trust and Collection’s umbrella constitute an advertisement for apartheid. Boycott Zabludowicz and stop the products of (your) artistic labour being turned into an aesthetic gloss for militarist oppression and racism!
WHAT DOES BEING A SUPPORTER INVOLVE?
Practically, we ask artists and artworkers to refuse to work with or for the Zabludowicz Trust or to those operating in their network of interests. The boycott is an active, non-symbolic refusal to reproduce the Zabludowicz Art Trust’s project or further its reactionary aims. Support means breaking off your involvement with Zabludowicz Art Trust in all its forms, and for institutions (academic or artworld) this involves ending partnerships with Zabludowicz Trust, de facto and (preferably) formally.
Boycotters refuse to work with, visit, or otherwise support Zabludowicz Art Trust’s work. It doesn’t matter if you have visited or worked with them in the past. Like any strike or protest, the point is where we are going, not where we have been.
Supporters agree not to sell to, or show their work with, the Zabludowicz Collection or Trust in any of its forms. They may withdraw the ‘conceptual content’ of their work if they have sold work to Zabludowicz Collection in the past. Writers and curators refuse to work for the organisation, to visit its sites, or to review its shows. They can also disaffiliate and deauthor their previous works and collaborations with the Zabludowicz Trust, whether artworks, essays, talks, performances, or any other kind of cultural work.
SIGN THE BOYCOTT TODAY!
You can sign the boycott pledge individually or as an organisation. Just click here or email BDZ and we will add your name: bdzgrp@riseup.net
GET INVOLVED IN BDZ
Please get in touch if you would like to join us in coordinating the Boycott. We respond to press and all other enquiries at the same mail: bdzgrp@riseup.net
We are in solidarity with Artists for Palestine who are advocating a cultural boycott of Israeli companies and institutions in receipt of funds from the Israeli state, and non-cooperation with attempts to silence and suppress critique of Israeli policy in the UK and abroad. The boycott is formulated in line with BDS and PACBI guidelines, and does not include activist, educational and peace-building initiatives in Israel, Palestine or abroad not supported by Israeli state agencies.
BDZ / Boycott Zabludowicz 