Film-maker Ken Loach urges boycott of Israeli cultural and sports events

FILM-MAKER Ken Loach – who directed The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Jimmy’s Hall – has called for a boycott of all cultural and sporting events that Israel supports, saying Israel must become a pariah state.

Loach was speaking at the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award ceremony in the Sarajevo Film Festival. The award went to two Palestinian documentary directors from Gaza, Abdel Salam Shehadeh and Ashraf Mashharawi.

Ken Loach said the situation of the residents of Gaza during Israel's Operation Protective Edge resembles that of the residents of Sarajevo when the city was under siege in the 1990s.

Loach is one of the celebrity signatories of a petition calling on British Prime Minister to to implement an arms embargo against Israel.