700 more artists now boycott Israel

* satire, but difficult to distinguish from the actual 'artists' statement below

Along with more than 600 other fellow dead artists, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government. Although we are all long dead it is perfectly obvious to us that  Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians the most brutal genocide in the history of the world. The human rights organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad have sadly confirmed this. The genocide has resulted in the Palestinian population only tripling in size in the last 10 years, with the Israelis having the audacity to continue sending millions of tons of food and medicine into Gaza, along with electricity and gas, even while the Palestinians were expressing their democratic right to fire thousands of harmless missiles into Israeli cities. The Israelis disgracefully detain and treat injured Palestinian resistance fighters in their hospitals, and they have also built horrific security fences to stop Palestinians from carrying out their legitimate right to murder Israeli children on buses. And the merciless Israelis have forced Gazans to live in poverty because the 20 billion dollars of charitable aid given by Western countries in the last 5 years all had to be spent on building desperately needed tunnels from Gaza into Israeli kindergartens, to hide the Palestinians' harmless weapons and suicide bombers.

While these atrocities take place Israeli artists cause pain and humiliation by continuing to paint pictures in occupied Palestinian land such as Tel Aviv and Netanya.  They even do water colours in occupied Haifa and Jerusalem, while in Ashkelon they have been seen to use pastels, and even pen and ink. Now we are saying, NO MORE. If we were not all dead, we would have nothing to do with any of them; we would not paint any pictures, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops in any place where there are Jews, until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians. To see the full list of supporters, go to deadartistsforpalestine.org.uk.

Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Toulouse LaTrec, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Salvadore Dali, Gustav Klimt, Paul Cezanne, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Titian, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Francisco de Goya, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edvard Munch, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Piet Mondrian, Paul Gauguin......

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See also: Incredible new boycott announcement from Israel boycotting artists