Israeli artists seek peace at the Shalom Festival in Edinburgh by Lana Melman

How do you steal a beach? For the boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS) campaign against Israel, the answer is one grain of sand at a time.

The cultural boycott effort seeks to rob the world of one of its most valued treasures – freedom of artistic expression – one artist, one performance, one exhibit at a time.

A case in point is the dangerous undertow at the Scottish Edinburgh Fringe Festival, (The Fringe), the largest performing arts festival in the world, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every August and provides unparalleled exposure for up and coming performers.

The anti-Israel Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) has cast a shadow of censorship over this popular and important cultural exchange with protests against Israeli participation.

Protests date back to at least 1997 but have been growing steadily in their impact.