Update

Burning Man Festival Condemns Anti-Palestinian Israeli Edition

Burning Man’s values of ‘radical inclusion’ cannot be met by a festival that effectively promotes Trump’s apartheid plan to annex Palestinian land. [Photo: Trey Ratcliff]

UPDATE 9th March 2020:

We welcome Burning Man’s public condemnation of an Israeli edition that shamelessly promotes the illegal US-Israeli plan to annex the occupied West Bank.

Yet, organizers of Burning Man’s other Israeli edition Midburn attempted last year to hold the festival at a training camp for Israel’s occupation army.

Previous events have taken place in the Naqab (Negev) desert, despite the ongoing state-backed persecution and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Bedouin Palestinians.

If Burning Man is serious about its values of ‘radical inclusion’, it must end its partnership with Midburn in order to end its complicity in serious and sustained war crimes.


Not content with holding events in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where Palestinian Bedouin communities are subjected to ongoing ethnic cleansing, and trying to organize festivals in training camps for Israel’s criminal army, Israeli organisers associated with and using the brand of US arts festival Burning Man have now announced an edition in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Palestinians have overwhelmingly called for boycotting all complicit Israeli cultural institutions, just as apartheid South Africa’s institutions were. Thousands of progressive artists worldwide are heeding our call.

Burning Man’s values of ‘radical inclusion’ cannot be met by a festival that effectively promotes Trump’s apartheid plan to annex Palestinian land, nor by any other Israeli festival that does not recognise and respect Palestinians’ comprehensive rights under international law.

This particular event’s organiser has tried to assuage concerns by arguing that Israel will soon illegally annex the area anyway. So much for ‘radical inclusion’.

Burning Man must condemn this blatant abuse of its brand and values, and end its association with its official Israeli partner Milburn, to end its complicity in systematic human rights abuses, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.


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