PALESTINE campaigners said today that “the revolution will not be Google-formed” during a panel discussion at The World Transformed in Manchester focused on artists and cultural workers opposing Israel’s Gaza genocide.

Speaking of the challenges of getting culture-sector unions such as the Musicians Union, the Scottish Artists Union and Equity to publicly support their campaigns, Hussein Mithm of Art Workers for Palestine Scotland said bureaucracy was the biggest obstacle the campaign had faced.

There is a tendency for people and unions to become drawn into bureaucratic procedures, Mr Mithm said, rather than the spirit of what they were trying to do.

“We have to break out of that and say: ‘What is the objective here?’ It’s not filling out forms and endless meetings. It’s to cause disruption and create change,” he argued.

“This whole question of bureaucracy has to be tackled by the whole trade union movement.”

Mr Mithm spoke of Art Workers for Palestine Scotland’s campaign to persuade cultural institutions and artists to sign up to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

“Our PACBI campaign involves a Google form,” he noted. “And some people are really hung up about the form. And we’re saying it not about the form. You can just make a post saying: ‘We pledge to boycott the shit out of Israel’.  

“And that’s the boycott. It’s not this rarified act of signing a form. It’s campaigning on the front foot. It’s building a cultural front against a zionist entity that’s destroying [the Middle East].

“Fuck process, fuck protocol. Collectivise. It’s about a plurality of tactics until we get results.”