21 July 2016

On Thursday 21 July our group of dedicated BDS protesters stood outside a beautiful old building, the Adelaide Town Hall, giving out leaflets to patrons of the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge concert, asking them to not attend the upcoming Jerusalem Quartet concert in September.

I am very pleased to say it was one of our most successful cultural boycott protests ever - 250 leaflets leapt out of our hands. This is a six-fold increase on our usual numbers. We even ran out of leaflets in the last five minutes.

We know that these leaflets will be read in the theatre by audience members waiting for the concert to start who will be exposed to the importance of BDS, particularly the cultural boycott to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian rights. Attendees for this concert were extremely well behaved and polite in their manner towards us and we did not see any of the verbal and physical violence that has been displayed towards us at earlier cultural events. I can only conclude that listening to classical music really does improve one's temperament!

It was heartening to hear quite a few people saying they would not be going to the Jerusalem Quartet concert. Also we had a very positive response in the main when people found out we were there for Palestine. One woman asked Christine if we were the Australian Friends of Palestine organisation and gave a huge thumbs-up and radiant smile when she said "yes".

Thank you everyone for your support.

Margaret