As millions of people witness Israel’s live-streamed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, its escalating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and its criminal military aggression in Lebanon and beyond, apartheid Israel is desperate to “clean up” its image through culture. Israel is spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year to artwash its image, and we’re noticing a trend—more theater pieces are attempting to make genocide and apartheid look like “complicated” issues with two legitimate viewpoints.

What Is Normalization?

According to the BDS movement, normalization (from the Arabic tatbee’) is any activity “dealing with or presenting something that is inherently abnormal, such as oppression and injustice, as if it were normal.” Normalization includes any plays, festivals, and other kinds of cultural activities that are based on the false premise of symmetry between oppressors and oppressed or which assume colonizers and colonized are equally responsible for the “conflict.”

What are Normalization Projects?

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) defines normalization projects as any cultural activity or event that involves Palestinians and/or Arabs on one side and Israelis (individuals or institutions) on the other and does not meet these two conditions:

The Israeli side publicly recognizes the full rights of the Palestinian people under international law, including the UN-affirmed right of return, and

The joint activity constitutes a form of co-resistance against the Israeli regime of genocide, occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.

Why Boycott?

What is “normal” is often taken to be what is acceptable.

Normalization activities, in effect if not in intent, serve to cover up the underlying system of apartheid and settler colonialism that Israel wants the world to unsee.

In this context, normalization forces us to coexist with apartheid and settler colonialism – not challenging it as we should, but contributing to a continuation of the unjust status quo.

How do plays violate BDS guidelines?

It is partially or fully sponsored by an official Israeli body, a complicit institution, or an Israel lobby group

The content of the play attempts to present the occupation, apartheid, and/or genocide of Palestinians as an issue with two equal sides

The production is a collaboration between Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis, in which the Israeli side has not publicly supported the comprehensive rights of Palestinians under international law

When audiences walk away with the idea that settler-colonialism is “complicated,” and not always wrong—that’s normalization.

But isn't the theater supposed to ask questions?

Sometimes the truth is straightforward. There is no need to complicate the barbaric racism of the planter class during US slavery, nor the colonial ambitions of early European settlers. Adding “nuance” to war crimes legitimizes them.

If a play is going to raise questions about Israel and Palestine, then it must answer with the truth: that Palestinian people have the right to live free from genocide, occupation, and apartheid.