This May 2025, Mandoline Hybride joins the PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) movement, part of the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. This move is in line with our ethical commitments, which are set out in our Policy on Governance, Equity and Ethical Conduct, as well as in the decolonial goals that have guided our organization’s strategic orientations for several years.

For Mandoline Hybride – its management, team and board of directors – joining PACBI is a simple but essential and significant gesture. It’s a concrete way of supporting and promoting an initiative led by Palestinian civil society, whose echo is now international. Several Canadian cultural organizations have already joined this solidarity movement. PACBI takes up the boycott principles that supported the end of apartheid in South Africa, and invites us to reflect on the ties of complicity that maintain systems of oppression on an international scale. By refusing to collaborate with the Israeli government or its funding bodies, and by boycotting cultural and academic products that normalize the state of Israel, we affirm our commitment to Palestinian self-determination. By joining PACBI, we wish to support the decolonial practices we are already implementing, while affirming the humility that this journey requires: we are all constantly learning about these issues, and we hope to encourage our peers to inform, reflect and mobilize with us.

For our organization, it’s a question of continuing the struggle against oppression that has taken many forms in recent years, and of reaffirming it at this critical moment in history. In the age of social networking, the genocide in Palestine is the first to take place in real time before our very eyes, in this brutal movement of hyper-mediatization. We know more than ever how violently colonial powers act on different communities around the world – our thoughts are with the peoples of Sudan, Congo and Haiti, where repression is ongoing, not to mention the violence perpetrated even today against Canada’s indigenous peoples. The genocide in Palestine is part of this logic, which favours the normalization of horrors, bringing to a climax the impunity with which such violence is committed by colonial regimes, with the complicity of Western countries. In the face of this, we refuse indifference, just as we refuse to be reduced to a feeling of powerlessness.

We believe that arts and culture play a central role in the normalization and artwashing of the horrors of genocide in Palestine. Yet arts and culture can become tools to support resistance to colonial oppression and the liberation of Palestine. We seek to promote artistic practices and cultural collaborations that resist colonial oppression and amplify the voices of liberation.

While some of the avenues proposed by PACBI may be difficult to apply to our specific context, we see this membership as an opportunity to keep ourselves on the move. Our aim is to approach PACBI with the rigor, intelligence and agility that characterize our practices, whether they be eco-responsible, decolonial or anti-oppressive. Already, in 2024, we have made various gestures in solidarity with the Palestinian people, in line with our ethical commitments:

• Declaration of solidarity with Palestine drafted by the 20 participants in the Feminist Writing Retreat and presented in Marsoui on May 4, 2024, alongside performances and readings of Palestinian poems;
• Coordination of a collection of donations for the purchase of eSIM cards sent to local Palestinian organizations in May 2024;
• Declaration of solidarity with Palestine at the Opening Night of the 5th edition of FURIES in Marsoui, July 25, 2024;
• Declaration of solidarity with Palestine at the Feminist Cabaret on May 10, 2025 in Marsoui, and inclusion of texts in solidarity with the Palestinian people; in the zine produced at the end of the 5th edition of the Feminist Writing Retreat;
• Coordination of a second collection of donations for the purchase of eSIM cards sent to local Palestinian organizations in May 2025.

By joining PACBI, we will continue to reflect on the links between our actions, our financing and our partnerships, in order to remain in line with our ethical commitments.

In solidarity,

Mandoline Hybride management, team and board of directors