Too close to HOME? Inside the meltdown over an event about 'genocide' in Gaza
The arts venue found itself under fire from two directions. But the real drama was behind the scenes
Miss our members-only story this week? It’s a brilliant read by the urban planner David Rudlin explaining how Manchester changed its mind about how to build streets and neighbourhoods. “I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that it’s a story that shaped the city we live in today,” David writes.
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By Mollie Simpson
On Monday 25th March, HOME announced an upcoming event featuring the actor Maxine Peake. The evening’s title — ‘Voices of Resilience’ — suggested something worthy, perhaps a little dull. Anyone reading it would surely have struggled to foresee the incredible strife, bad blood and public anger it would unleash, a rolling drama featuring never-ending crisis talks behind the scenes that climaxed on Thursday afternoon with a screeching U-turn.
The event promised Peake reading from the diary of Atef Abu Saif, an acclaimed Palestinian author and minister for culture for the Palestine Authority, concerning his time in Gaza in the aftermath of the 7th October attack on Israel. Organised by the freelance academic and artist Dani Abulhawa and Ra Page from the independent publishing house Comma Press, it would also feature poetry readings from the actor Kingsley Ben Adir, the author Kamila Shamsie and local artist Mohammed Ghalayini. “In the face of wholesale genocide,” read the event’s publicity material, “the resilience of Palestinians has, over the last six months, been an inspiration to artists.”
HOME quickly found itself under enormous pressure. Members of Greater Manchester’s Jewish community accused the arts organisation of giving a platform to Abu Saif’s work, accusing him of antisemitism and even Holocaust denial — claims the writer and his publisher have strongly denied. Some took issue with the use of the highly contested word “genocide” to describe what was happening in Gaza. HOME cancelled the event just three days after announcing it, citing safety concerns.
Then another backlash began.
Hundreds of posts on social media accused the venue of censorship. Two demonstrations arrived at HOME’s doorstep, with speakers claiming the venue had “silenced Palestinian voices at a time when they most needed to be heard”. This week, HOME performed a dramatic U-turn and reinstated the event. The venue apologised for any distress caused to communities across Greater Manchester and said it no longer had safety concerns.
Comma Press described it a “watershed moment” in the debate about arts venues holding pro-Palestine events, when many have become concerned about a climate of censorship. In October last year, Liverpool Hope University cancelled a lecture by the British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, criticising the formation of the state of Israel. And in February, the Barbican arts centre in London withdrew a lecture series that featured allegations that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, saying the event was published “prematurely” and that it did not have time to “do the careful preparation needed for this sensitive content”.
‘They want to humiliate Jews’
When the event was announced on Monday 25th March, The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester (JRCGM) issued a strong objection. On Wednesday 27th March, the JRCGM published an open letter arguing that Abu Saif had a history of antisemitic remarks, saying his “views have no place in Manchester and risk increasing antisemitism against the Jewish community”. The JRCGM’s letter claimed that Abu Saif had said that “Israel surpassed Hitler’s massacres” and that he had defended Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas against claims of antisemitism. Comma Press says it is considering legal action for libel based on the JRCGM’s statement.
Ed Glinert, a local tour guide and writer who co-founded City Life magazine in the 1980s, says he felt “shocked and horrified” after reading the publicity material for Voices of Resilience. “To me, [it’s as if] someone has got to HOME to try to put this festival on, not because they’ve got any interest in the rights of Arabs in the Middle East, but because they want to humiliate Jews,” Glinert tells me. “Simple as that.”
He wrote a letter to HOME last Tuesday, alleging the wording of the publicity material was “full of lies and hatred”, adding: “This now means no Jew is welcome at HOME, the major arts venue in a metropolis with the second biggest Jewish population in the country.” Glinert says he isn’t especially familiar with Abu Saif’s work or his alleged antisemitic comments. His particular issue was with the event’s promotional material — specifically, the use of the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza.
It’s thought that Greater Manchester’s Jewish community has faced a rise in antisemitism since Hamas attacked Israel on 7th October. The Jewish group the Community Security Trust says over 500 antisemitic incidents were recorded in Greater Manchester last year, with 221 incidents recorded between 7th October and 10th November 2023.
Glinert went further than the JRCGM in his concerns about the event. When the JRCGM tweeted on Thursday 27th March that there was “absolutely no reason” for HOME to cite safety concerns, a Twitter/X account for ‘New London Walks’ — a tour guide company run by Glinert — replied: “I think you're very wrong there. There was a very good chance of the speakers whipping the crowd into a frenzy, who would then go on the rampage.”
Of course, Glinert does not speak for all local Jews. Members of Na’amod North West, an organisation of Jewish people who support an end to what they call Israel’s “crimes of apartheid”, wrote to HOME in support of the event. “While we abhor what happened on 7th October we feel the action in Gaza is genocide and it is crucial to hear Gazan voices at this terrible time,” they wrote in the letter, which they shared with The Mill. “We are noticing an increasing silencing of opposition to the actions of Israel that is gravely concerning.”
Glinert is no stranger to this kind of campaign. In 2022, Alasdair Hudson, the director of Whitworth Art Gallery, was asked to leave his post after a series of complaints from activists who suggested he had commissioned an exhibition on air pollution in Palestine, with no attempt to check its accuracy or legality. It’s an incident that Glinert, amongst others, seems happy to take credit for, saying that we “came down on them like a tonne of bricks” and that they eventually “managed to get the director sacked”.
He clarifies that he was not asking for anyone to be removed from their position at HOME over Voices of Resilience — he just wanted the event cancelled. For a few days, he got his wish.
The cancellation
This controversy came at a tricky time for HOME, which is just embarking on a new era under fresh leadership after the departure of Dave Moutrey, its longtime chief executive and artistic director (you can read his in-depth interview with us from earlier this year). In his place, the organisation is run by joint chief executives Karen O'Neill, who joined late last year from Dukes theatre in Lancashire, and Sita McIntosh, who previously worked at WhatsOnStage and who is described on HOME’s website as its “Interim Creative Director”.
Soon after Voices of Resilience event was announced, O’Neill started speaking to Comma Press. According to two sources at the publisher, HOME’s new co-CEO described receiving “hundreds of emails” complaining about the event. I’m told those initial phone calls consisted of discussion around the use of the word genocide in the publicity materials.
Eventually, the team at Comma Press relented: they agreed to remove any mention of the word “genocide” from the event. But this change would be tricky. Because Voices of Resilience also functioned as a launch for Abu Saif’s new book, Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide, this meant covering up the word “genocide” with a sticker on the front cover of the books. In one phone call, O’Neill suggested withdrawing the book from the event altogether, according to two sources at Comma Press.
Then, “it just escalated,” one Comma Press staff member says. On Thursday 28th March, Comma Press met the chief executives of HOME over a “rushed meeting” on Zoom. According to two sources, O’Neill and McIntosh suggested they had been told articles were going to be published in the Jewish Telegraph and the Jewish Chronicle newspapers which would lay bare the institution’s failings if they did not cancel the event. “They were saying there’s an article coming and it’s explosive,” a representative from Comma Press remembers. “So we were just waiting with bated breath to see what the article would say. It never appeared.”
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