Responding to Vancouver video artist jamie griffiths’s call for a boycott of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company, a spokesperson for the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) said any attempt to stifle Israeli arts would hinder, not help, the peace process.

“Israeli culture, more than anything, has helped promote cross-cultural understanding,” insisted Paul Michaels, communications director for the CIC. “To boycott something like the famed Batsheva Dance Company”¦only hurts any effort for reconciliation. It’s absolutely counterproductive.”

Griffiths said she would be boycotting the dance troupe—which has been dogged by protests at recent performances in Pittsburgh and Chicago—when it appears at the Vancouver Playhouse this Friday and Saturday (February 21 and 22, see story above), in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement championed in an article by Naomi Klein. “They [Batsheva] really have become like the Israeli poster child of Israeli culture,” griffiths said.

“In general, the arts community in Israel is very, very progressive,” Michaels said. “It’s the last element of a society you want to impair or hurt.”