Tunnel vision

The Guardian last week published a ‘we, the undersigned’ letter from 50 ‘artists of conscience’ urging the BBC to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest because it’s taking place in Israel. ‘Eurovision may be light entertainment,’ they wrote, ‘but it is not exempt from human rights considerations — and we cannot ignore Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights.’ The signatories included such luminaries as Julie Christie, Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Vivienne Westwood and Ken Loach.

Ken’s inclusion will have come as a surprise to those Israelis who saw his film I, Daniel Blake in Tel Aviv a couple of years ago. Ken’s hypocrisy was pointed out when he chastised Radiohead for ignoring the cultural boycott of Israel. ‘Radiohead need to decide whether they stand with the oppressed or the oppressor,’ he thundered in the Independent. Asked why Ken hadn’t observed the boycott, his producer Rebecca O’Brien said she’d done the deal ‘accidentally’ and without Ken’s knowledge, a claim pooh-poohed by his Israeli distributor Guy Shani. ‘I can’t tell you how absurd this is,’ he said. ‘We’ve been showing his movies for years. I have been paying him money every year.’ Still, let’s give the old booby the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Ken genuinely isn’t aware that nearly all his films have been distributed in Israel.

But surely he can’t claim ignorance when it comes to human rights violations in Venezuela? Hugo Chávez’s security forces were widely condemned for their heavy-handed reaction to anti-government demonstrations across Venezuela in 2014, shooting dead civilians and imprison-ing and torturing dozens of protest leaders and yet the following year Ken was the headline speaker at the East London Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Why the self-righteous tub-thumping about Palestinians, but not a squeak about the beleaguered opposition movement in Venezuela?

The same double standard has been exhibited by the other signatories, several of whom have close links with Jeremy Corbyn.