Denounce, don't censor: Globe's invitation to Habima should stand

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/apr/03/denounce-dont-censor-habima-globe

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I was sad to see the letter (30 March) from many eminent theatre workers – including David Calder, Mark Rylance, Harriet Walter, Roger Lloyd Pack, Cherie Lunghi and Jonathan Miller – asking Shakespeare's Globe to withdraw the invitation to Israel's Habima theatre to perform The Merchant of Venice in its Globe to Globe festival this coming May. I think it's wrong-headed – could the signatories think again?

They argue that, by inviting the Habima, the Globe is showing support for the illegal settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories. But by inviting the National Theatre of China to perform Richard III, is the Globe also showing support for the occupation of Tibet?

The Habima's touring in the territories is sickening. Its staff are deeply divided about it. The arts become so twisted and torn about in a conflict as terrible as that between Israel and Palestine, used as a fig leaf for propaganda. Yet sometimes above the shouts of demagogues a true voice can be heard, even from the stage of an enemy.

I trust the Globe's international spirit and openness with which it has put together this amazingly diverse season of world theatre. For it to withdraw one of the invitations to the 37 companies – some with very questionable state affiliations – would be a disgraceful act of censorship.

Denounce, don't censor; argue, don't ban. I have long supported the cause of Palestinian freedom. But I am distressed to see British actors trying to stop Jewish actors perform on a London stage. Howard Brenton London

• Geoffrey Alderman (Letters, 2 April) says Israelis have a "right" to establish settlements on the West Bank and that that right is enshrined in international law. This interpretation – current in some circles of the Israeli extreme right and its supporters abroad – makes a highly tendentious interpretation of the UN charter in order to "prove" that the British Mandate of Palestine is still legally in existence in some nebulous and abstract way, and that the Mandatory government's land law of 1922 is still in force, notwithstanding the 1947 partition resolution, the creation of the state of Israel, and everything else which has happened since 1922.

This is a highly tendentious argument, unlikely to convince any but its own narrow circle of "true believers". In any case, in 2004 the international court of justice in the Hague ruled clearly and unequivocally that the Israeli settlement activity on the West Bank is completely illegal. The international court of justice is the body set by the international community for the specific purpose of interpreting international law in specific contentious cases, and it did just that.

It is, of course, the right of Professor Alderman to dispute the court's ruling and assert that the honourable judges made a mistake – just as one can so dispute the ruling of a national court. Still, until and unless the international court rules otherwise, its 2004 ruling stands as the authoritative interpretation of international law, and British actors are quite justified in pointing this out to Israeli colleagues who choose to perform in settlements which the international court proclaimed to be illegal. Adam Keller Gush Shalom movement, Israel