The Resistance Festival issued the following statement in response to a series of media and political attacks on the Festival and on Palestinian refugee youth theater performers, sparked by the lies of the “Israeli” ambassador to Belgium, Idit Rosenweig:
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the israeli ambassador is lying. Again.
On Monday the 9th of June, amidst the continued horrors inflicted by the genocidal and colonial zionist occupation in Gaza, the representative of the genocidal zionist entity in Belgium decided to fabricate a lie about a Palestinian theatre piece performed at the Resistance Festival in Brussels. This lie is yet another part of the systematic campaign of genocide denial that the official representatives of the regime have begun carrying out since October 7th to justify their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The theatre piece performed by Palestinian refugees in Place Bethlehem was about the ongoing genocide that has killed over 55,000 Palestinians and the Palestinian Resistance that has remained steadfast. It began with actors of various nationalities and ages holding pieces of paper asking, “Why is our voice silenced? Why are children killed in front of their parents? Why is Palestinian Resistance called terrorism?”. The bodies on the ground depicted murdered Palestinians wearing keffiyehs and Palestinian children covered in bloodied shrouds. Hundreds of people witnessed the play, cheering and applauding in the end, as the Resistance fighters celebrated their victory against a genocidal regime that has killed, again, over 55,000 Palestinians.
Instead of watching the full performance, freely available on social media, the zionists like to believe that everything is about themselves. The official representative of the genocidal regime trots out a bare-faced falsehood that the bodies are Israelis, and that the play was about October 7th, and the Right-wing media immediately follow suit. Rather than fulfilling their journalistic duty to find out the truth, they instead act as stenographers for a foreign government, stretching the lie so far as to say that the bodies on the ground cannot be Palestinian as some actors are wearing shorts.
Despite our clarifications to the media, and to the mayor of St Gilles, Zionists will continue to do what they do best: defend their lie until they have enough time to think of a new one, in order to deflect from the latest atrocities committed by their entity and its increasingly clear position as a pariah state. Indeed, this isn’t the first or last lie the official representative of the genocidal regime, Idit Rozenweig has fabricated. Aside from her constant smears of the Palestine solidarity movement in Belgium, she also compared Palestinian prisoners to Marc Dutroux, Belgium’s most infamous paedophile, when israeli occupation soldiers are consistently exposed for sexual assault including in prisons. At a time when the EU is facing increasing pressure to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement and Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both ministers in the administration she represents, have been sanctioned by five countries including the UK for incitment to commit human rights violations, one would be forgiven for assuming she perhaps has more pressing priorities than street theatre in St Gilles. Alas, Madam Rozenweig instead spends her days tweeting. Her commitment to spotlighting the arts would be laudable, were she not using her cultural illiteracy to spread a defamatory campaign against young Palestinian artists. In desperate daily tweets acknowledged exclusively by fascists and client journalists, Madam Rozenweig is attempting to present her genocidal settler colony as the victim. It is a move akin to closing the stable door after the horse has not only bolted, but lived a full life and died of natural causes.
We refuse to participate in this pathetic charade. Her latest lie is not the story. An 11 year old killed by the police is the story, rubber bullets fired on mourners is the story, a sitting member of the European Parliament kidnapped in international waters is the story, and above all, over 55,000 Palestinians murdered by Israel with the full backing of the West, is the story.
Madam Rozenweig’s preferred form of diplomacy is one based in threats and lies, more mobster than ambassador. Her continued presence in Belgium is an affront to democracy and an embarrassment to a country that professes to respect human rights and the rule of law. Rather than censoring Palestinian refugees, Belgium must take belated action to stop its complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Stop the criminalisation of Palestinian refugees and activists. Stop the repression and police brutality. Stop the genocide denial by Belgian politicians. Suspend all ties with the Zionist entity, and expel Idit Rozenweig for her crimes.
Free Free Palestine.
