‘Rivers to the Seas’ event handed almost £1 million in Scottish taxpayers’ cash

A pro-Palestine arts event accused of calling for the eradication of Israel has received nearly £1 million in Scottish taxpayers’ cash. The five-day series of film screenings, poetry readings and workshops, “From the rivers to the seas”, is set to take place at Glasgow arts venue Tramway between November 11 and November 15. The title of the event – which aims to bring together different groups working on “anti-colonial resistance” – has prompted outrage, with critics alleging it is a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

“The SNP’s arts quango might want to wash its hands of this show with its antisemitic title,” Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay told the Mail. Elliot Davis, former chairman of the Judeo-Christian Alliance, said “From the rivers to the seas” was “virulent hate speech as it calls for the eradication of the tiny Jewish state of Israel”. The organising non-profit, Arika, has received £911,950 in funding from SNP quango Creative Scotland.

Adverts for the event say it will include artists, academics, activists and writers discussing Palestine, colonialism, abolitionism and social justice. The website reads: “How do we think with, and from, Palestine on a planetary scale? Can we connect different sites of anti-colonial resistance, without flattening them through analogy, equivalence or universalism? “Colonial violence is constantly recomposed as it adapts to different contexts.

Each instance prototypes new mechanisms of extraction, but also insurgent forms of resistance, changing how past, present and future ones are understood. “How then can we learn in the back and forth between different colonial situations and the struggles of refusal that resist them?” Arika said the festival was a show of solidarity with Palestinians amid “an ongoing genocide”. Findlay said: “Creative Scotland has bankrolled this arts quango with almost a million pounds of taxpayers’ cash so they must bear some responsibility and accountability.

"John Swinney’s SNP government also can’t dodge its role in diverting vast sums of public money being spent on highly questionable projects like this.” Davis said: “It’s a sad day for Scotland that we are governed by a political party, the SNP, which literally supports and funds Jew-hate racism via Creative Scotland.” Creative Scotland told the JC it did not influence the programming decisions made by event organisers. “We support Arika through our multi-year funding programme, which provides stable funding over three years for the operations and creative programmes of 262 cultural organisations across Scotland,” it said.

Tramway, where the event is being held, is also funded by Creative Scotland but run by council-funded Glasgow Life. A spokesman for Glasgow Life told the JC: “This is the 12th time Arika has programmed a festival at Tramway. Glasgow Life is committed to maintaining its political neutrality and while we saw the five-day programme in advance, we noted that the themes are already being discussed daily around the world and did not ask for it to be changed.

“We have also in the recent past, provided a venue for Glasgow Friends of Israel, demonstrating we are here for all Glasgow’s communities. “Tramway provides £4,000 to the programme and incurs approximately £5,000 for staff costs and marketing related to the five-day programme.” Israel has consistently denied allegations of genocide. A spokesperson for Arika said: "We are not antisemitic. People from many religions are included in our programme, including Jewish colleagues.

Inspired by the long history of Jewish Anti-Zionism, we refute the conflation of Zionism with all of Judaism. “Arika does not intend to offend the Jewish community. We are critical of the Israeli government’s Zionist practices. These are different things. "The UK Prime Minister has made a similar distinction: ‘Our sanctions aren’t about the Israeli people, but about the unacceptable policies of the Israeli government’.” The spokesperson also suggested that since the phrase “from the river to sea” was present in an early Likud manifesto, “to therefore call for freedom for all Palestinians on that land using the same words seems totally natural”.

Responding to a request for comment, the Scottish government said Creative Scotland had no role in the programming decisions made by the organisations that it funds.