Popular Art Centre (PAC)

Activities

• Claims to “disseminate creative arts and culture to various sectors…to preserve and maintain cultural heritage, protect the national identity, and upgrade levels of creativity in form and content.”
• PAC engages in political warfare against Israel, including through its highly troubling rhetoric.
• In May 2020, PAC, alongside a number of Palestinian organizations, issued a statement that the “the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront Israel’s regime of institutionalised racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, which amounts to the crime of apartheid.” The NGOs falsely claimed that Israel has legal obligations to ensure that vaccines be provided to Palestinians, while altogether ignoring that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; and that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policy for its population.
• On April 6-7, 2017, PAC was one of the organizers of a children’s festival on the topic of “the 30 year Palestinian uprising.” One dance routine publicized by PAC was titled “Songs of the Intifada.” Another was captioned “Brother, point the gun” (NGO Monitor translation).
• In February 2016, PAC organized a ceremony in honor of “Palestinian martyrs” whose homes were demolished, featuring the “father of the martyr Baha Eleyan” as a speaker (NGO Monitor translation). Eleyan was one of two terrorists to board a bus in Jerusalem in October 2015 armed with a gun and a knife, murdering three and injuring seven. The same ceremony featured a musical performance captioned “no to laying down guns” (NGO Monitor translation).
• Published numerous statements in support of hunger-striking prisoners, a group primarily comprised of murderers convicted of bombings of buses, malls, and cafes, and other atrocities.
• Hosted a “Nakba Day” a Gazan school, where it taught students aged 7-13 about “the Nakba in general and the boycott of the Israeli state of occupation.”
• Participated in a 2017 Israel Apartheid Week event, organized by “BDS Arabic.” Nai Barghouti, a singer who performed at PAC’s event, posted on Facebook after the event that “our journey of résistance is still alive and kicking. We will not stop until we gain our freedom and that is a fact.”
• In July 2014, PAC invited its followers to a “Day of Palestinian Rage” (NGO Monitor translation).
• Supports a Palestinian “right of return,” which, if implemented, would effectually mean the elimination of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
• Participates in discriminatory campaigns such as “Love in the Time of Apartheid Campaign: The Palestinian Campaign for Repealing Israel’s Racist Law Denying Family Reunification.”

BDS Activities

• Supports BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, encouraging its followers to boycott Israeli products.
• In October 2020, PAC was a signatory on a joint appeal calling to “cancel all scheduled performances, exhibitions and appearances in Israel, or sponsored by the Israeli government or complicit Israeli institutions, whether in-person or online, for as long as Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid persists.”
• In September 2020, following Israel signing a peace deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), PAC was a signatory on a statement pledging to “boycott the UAE regime over Israel normalization.”
• In March 2019, PAC participated in the BDS campaign to boycott Eurovision, signing a statement alleging that “Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid shamelessly exploits Eurovision as part of the official ‘Brand Israel’ strategy, trying to show ‘Israel’s more beautiful face’ to launder and divert attention from the country’s war crimes against the Palestinians.”
• In August 2018, PAC called for the boycott of the Meteor Music Festival in Israel as it is a “festival on ethnically cleansed land.”
• Signatory to a 2005 open letter to the Palestinian Environment NGO Network (PENGON), expressing support for its boycott of Bar-Ilan University and Haifa University and calling to “broaden the boycott until it is comprehensive of all Israeli academic institutions.”
• Signatory to academic and cultural boycott initiatives from 2015 and 2014.