Category: Music

Posted on

If You Don’t Laugh, You’d Have to Cry – Let Me Off This Doomed Planet

NB, NSA, please read my poetry.

Bureaucratic Blues

I smell the fear on your vinyl briefcase
as across the table like Captain Cook
you pity the poor natives.
Your backdoor agenda and verbal pyrotechnology’s
a front for the urgency to move onto lunch,
the bottom line, where you will be free
of the irritation of our disagreement.

Snake on a ladder, you have all the answers
before the questions are put, and if I resist
and say ‘what about this?’ I’ll be hived off.
You want your lunch and I have a hunch
you’ll have your way no matter what I say,
top down, bottoms up.

I’m not here for a handout, just some of our taxes back.
You have your priorities sent down the line
(I’ll scratch your back if you stab mine),
keeping the upper hand for the mortgage’s sake,
your PS perks and old boy lurks building
a superstructure of barbies and kids on Sunday
with the Director and the man on the next rung,
top down, bottoms up,
drinking and laughing about idealists
who’d like to step over your head.

I wonder if you hear us at all,
while unseen in the community
quiet synergy turns the wheels eventually,
bottoms up.

Jinjirrie 1993

Posted on

Stanley Jordan, Please Respect the Boycott of Israel

Stanley JordanDear Stanley Jordan,

We are aware that you, Kenwood Dennard and Alex Blake, are slated to play at the Eilat Red Sea Jazz Festival in January, 2013, and wish to persuade you to reconsider and cancel. In 2005, Palestinian civil society called for boycott as a principled tactic to achieve justice and the rights denied to them by Israel. SInce then, prominent musicians such as Elvis Costello, Roger Waters, Cat Power, Cassandra Wilson and many others have responded in solidarity and with vocal support. The Portico Quartet has already cancelled their performance at Eilat. A letter sent to the director of the band said that “the decision to cancel the arrival of the ensemble Israel stems directly from the Israeli government’s decision to build 3,000 housing units in E1”.

The call to boycott is made to people of conscience across the globe because governments have refused or been unable to act to implement justice guaranteed to Palestinian people under international law. The Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is similar to the effective means employed by anti-apartheid activists to end South African apartheid. Noted anti-apartheidists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Alan Boesak, Ronnie Kasrils and others have stated that the apartheid practised by Israel is far worse than that which they experienced in South Africa.

As you observe in your NLP studies, while music can be employed as a healing tool, 65 years of music have not healed Israel’s constant oppression of the Palestinians and denial of their basic human rights. Music has not helped to end the criminal occupation of Palestinian lands, to allow equal rights for all in Israel and to recognise the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. Israel continues to steal Palestinian land and prevent the Palestinian people from attaining self-determination, while pretending to be for ‘peace’ under the pretext of interminable negotiations, ‘security’ and ‘the right to defend itself’.

In 2005, Nissim Ben-Sheetrit of Israel’s Foreign Ministry specifically denoted all culture as propaganda, a means to obscure Israel’s oppression, to anaesthetise its first class citizens from the results of their state’s actions, to dehumanise Palestinians and send a false message to the world that all is normal. Musicians who breach the boycott are used to promote these lies and are flaunted on Israel’s propaganda sites to bolster excuses for ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Portico Quartet supports BDS
Portico Quartet announcement of support for BDS – http://www.facebook.com/porticoquartetmusic/posts/10152308885645234

Please do not compromise yourself and your music by being appropriated and used in this way against a moral right. Music can move the spirit of the planet, yet it can also drown out the cries of oppressed people.

As the powerful entity in this grossly unequal situation, Israel intends to dominate the message, and sees all criticism of its crimes as delegitimising. Nevertheless, the truth about its oppression is beginning to ring out clearly. You can assist Palestinian people in gaining their rights by choosing to do no harm to their chosen tactic of resistance – please cancel, and stand in solidarity with the voiceless who rely upon those who can use their voice to support their just cause.

Best regards

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel

We are a group of 950 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians and other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

Posted on

You Oughta Know It’s Apartheid, Alanis Morissette – Please Don’t Play Israel

Alanis Morissette Live 2012Dear Alanis Morissette,

We are writing to you to ask that you not cross the Palestinian picket line by playing in Israel in December. As we write, the people of Gaza, who live in the world’s largest open-air prison, are being subjected to nightly airstrikes by Israel, a few miles from where you would be playing to a segregated audience. Last week, humanitarian activists trying to break the illegal, immoral siege of Gaza were kidnapped in international waters, tasered and imprisoned in Israel. Their crime? Showing solidarity to the Palestinian people.

Last month the United Nations issued a report: “Gaza in 2020, a Liveable Place?” [1] focusing on Gaza’s precarious situation, particularly regarding power supply, water, education and employment. Gaza’s 1.6 million people, most of them refugees and over half of them children, are held in a tiny piece of land with their movements controlled by Israel and their basic human rights denied. They are also terrorised by drone planes and military incursions regularly. Can you imagine that human beings are being treated like this? Can you imagine playing for the state that does this? Amnesty International, an organisation which you have supported, has documented Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, as have many other NGOs. [2]

Were this Israel’s only breach of human rights, it should be enough for you not to play in Tel Aviv. However, Israel is also guilty of gross human rights violations against the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and the Palestinian citizens of Israel. In November 2011 the Russell Tribunal on Palestine determined that Israel is practising apartheid against the Palestinian people. [3] Its session in New York this month saw submissions from Alice Walker, Angela Davis and Roger Waters among others and made the following findings:

“Among these violations of international law, several of them are criminally sanctioned: war crimes (Israeli settlements, inhumane treatment, torture, indiscriminate attacks, home demolitions, forced population transfer, collective punishment, 1996 ILC Draft Code of crimes against the peace and security of mankind, Art. 20; 4th GC, Art. 147, Rome Statute Art. 8), crimes against humanity (persecution defined by the International Criminal Court (ICC) Statute cited here as expression of international custom, Art. 7), and the crime of Apartheid (1973 UN Convention, Art. 1 ; on Apartheid and persecution, see 2011 Capetown findings of this Tribunal). Because of their systematic, numerous, flagrant and, sometimes, criminal character, these violations are of a particularly high gravity.” [4]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu described the situation thus: “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel“. [5]

As a means of resistance to this apartheid, Palestinian civil society, like its South African counterpart during their struggle, has called for a boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and Universal Principles of Human Rights. The PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) call [6] for BDS, made by over 200 civil society organisations, is growing in international support daily and the list of artists respecting the call includes: Santana, Cat Power, Elvis Costello, Cassandra Wilson, Massive Attack, Jello Biafra, Faithless, Leftfield, Gorillaz, Pixies, Gil Scott Heron, and many more who have refused to play for apartheid. If there is any doubt that the state uses artists’ performances in Israel as endorsement of its policies, this quotation from the Israeli foreign ministry where it stated that it “sees no difference between propaganda and culture”, should dispel that. Indeed, the official state twitter was boasting about your upcoming performance when it was announced. [7]

Just this week the African National Congress (ANC) International Solidarity Conference voted to support the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, cementing the links between the two struggles against apartheid. [8]

When a performer playing last week asked his Israeli interviewer if Palestinians could attend the concert, the response was: “We have to check.” Playing to a segregated audience is not worthy of you, Alanis, and would be a terrible disappointment to many of your fans.

Every day the Palestinian people endure Israeli oppression with dignity and immense courage – all they are asking is that you do not cross their picket line. In solidarity with them, we are asking you to not to play for apartheid. Alanis, please cancel.

Warmest Regards,
Don’t Play Apartheid Israel
We are a group of 950 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians and other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel. This is essential in order to work towards justice for the Palestinian people under occupation, and also in refugee camps and in the diaspora throughout the world.

Notes:
[1] http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/104094048-Gaza-in-2020-A-livable-place.pdf
[2] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/impunity-war-crimes-gaza-southern-israel-recipe-further-civilian-suffering-20090702
[3] http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa
[4] http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/future-sessions
[5] http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article727749.ece/Tutu-urges-Cape-Town-Opera-to-call-off-Israel-tour
[6] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1801
[7] http://refrainplayingisrael.blogspot.ie/2012/09/alanis-morissette-why-apoptygma-berzerk.html
[8] http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-far-worse-apartheid-south-africa-says-anc-chair-pretoria-conference-backs

SOURCE