Appeal for Participation
Notice of the Establishment of the Artists' League
"Artists Against Occupation"
Mizuko Yakuwa
I begin here and now at a gallery in Tokyo with a small exhibition named "Palestine Palestine".
We have just started to organize a league of artists all over the world, and this exhibition is the first by "Artists Against Occupation". With your support and participation we hope that this movement will grow. I remember an exhibition named "Arts against Apartheid" the first exhibition of which was held in Paris in 1983, and afterward travelled the world.
Beaches for "Whites Only" have disappeared today from South Africa, but beaches for "Israelis Only" exist in Gaza. Five thousand Israelis live in their settlement which occupies one third of the Gaza Strip, and one million Palestinians survive in the other two thirds. Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza and neighbouring countries, where people expelled from their own land live, show us the same scenes as we saw in Soweto, South Africa. Palestinian refugees especially in Lebanon are suffering the added suppression of restrictions on their occupations. And Palestinians staying in their own dwelling place are considered as foreigners in their homeland. "Israeli Settlements" planted in occupied territories against International Law are, indeed, "Racial Isolation Zones" where Israeli soldiers point machineguns at Palestinians from whom Israel confiscated the land for her settlements.
The oppression and exploitation by South Africa and those by Israel now resemble each other in spite of their racial and geographical differences. Our goal must be the end of the Israeli Occupation. This Issue can be settled in peace if Israel accepts International Law and complies with UN resolutions, and if she recognizes that Palestinian Israelis have equal rights with Jewish Israelis as in an ordinary democratic state.
I hope this exhibition, started alone in Tokyo will become a four artist exhibition in the next country and a seven artist one in the third country. And so on until by the time we shall have the final exhibition in Palestine in peace, there shall be one hundred exhibitors.
I appeal to artists living in this age, please have your name entered in the league "Artists Against Occupation".
