We are a group of over 850 people from all over the world who are united together in support of democracy, human rights, justice, and freedom for the Palestinian people.
We ask you to respect the call of Palestinian civil society, and refrain from scheduling a concert in Israel. Please stay true to the words that your management wrote on your behalf in June of 2010:
“Jennifer Lopez would never knowingly support any state, country, institution or regime that was associated with any form of human rights abuse.” [1]
You refused to play in Turkish-controlled Cyprus, as your appearance would have made a political statement in favor of human rights violations. Similarly, if you perform in Israel, you will be making a political statement affirming support for human rights violations by Israel. Your appearance will be used to whitewash Israel’s crimes against humanity since Israel uses all culture as propaganda and makes no distinction between the two. Music cannot bind people across the walls of apartheid where segregation, discrimination and brutality remain after the last song ends.
You produced and played the role of “Lauren Adrian” in the film Bordertown, calling needed attention to the plight of women in Juárez, Mexico. Your statement [2] during your award ceremony by Amnesty International 2007 shows your compassion for the oppressed:
“Since first hearing of these atrocities in 1998, when Gregory Nava came to me with this project, I desperately wanted to tell this story. I began working to ensure we made this film in order to bring the attention of the world to this tragedy and to pressure the Mexican government to bring to justice those responsible for these horrible crimes.”
You don’t need us to tell you how mainstream media in the USA has been in denial of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, starting from the Nakba in 1948, through the current apartheid and racism. In fact, people are often led to believe that it is important to meet the needs of suffering Israelis, while ignoring the much greater sufferings imposed by Israel, which forces millions of Palestinians into living as refugees and in destitution. The pain Israel inflicts on Palestinian women and children is well represented in children’s artwork and in the piece of artwork entitled “Torment” by Najah.
Some artists objecting to the Israeli regime’s actions have justified their booked performances in Israel as acts of support for the Israeli “peaceniks.” Another performing musician, Natacha Atlas, wrote:
“I had an idea that performing in Israel would have been a unique opportunity to encourage and support my fans’ opposition to the current government’s actions and policies. I would have personally asked my Israeli fans face-to-face to fight this apartheid with peace in their hearts…”
Natacha Atlas then confirmed that she decided to cancel, explaining:
“after much deliberation I now see that it would be more effective a statement to not go to Israel until this systemised apartheid is abolished once and for all. Therefore I publicly retract my well-intentioned decision to go and perform in Israel…” [3]
Please read about Israel’s apartheid in the letter that was written to French philosopher and prominent intellectual, Jacques Rancière (Professor emeritus, University Paris 8) by the PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). Jacques Rancière subsequently chose to cancel his planned lecture at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University earlier this year. (See http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1793)
Already this year prominent artists Cassandra Wilson, tUnE-yArDs and Cat Power have chosen to respect the boycott and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for justice. Also among the growing list of artists that have cancelled concerts and events in Israel are the late Gil Scott-Heron, Elvis Costello, the Pixies, Mike Leigh, Klaxons, Gorillaz Sound System and many more.[4]
We are hoping that you will choose to respect the boycott.
The Amira brothers from Ni’lin village in the West Bank try to reach the Madonna concert in Israel. They explain they are living in a very big jail. courtesy of Israel.
Boycott, divest and sanction from apartheid Israel! No normalisation with Israel until its disgusting brutal oppression and denial of human rights to Palestinians ends.
After wrapping herself in the flag of Israel on stage, Madonna poses with Nutanyahoo and wife. This photo illustrates Madonna's propaganda value to Israel's politicians.
For “Gang Bang,” Madonna wrestled with armed intruders whom she then dispatched with a pistol – their “blood” spattering across an enormous video backdrop. In a routine for “Revolver”, she wielded a Kalashnikov rifle, used by many modern-day insurgents, while one of her dancers favored an Israeli Uzi.
Nauseating: “During that show, she wrapped herself in an Israeli flag and called Israel the “energy centre of the world.”
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
c/o Warner Music
75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10019
USA
23 May 2012
Dear Red Hot Chili Peppers,
South African Artists to Red Hot Chili Peppers: Don’t Entertain Apartheid, Choose the Right Side of History!
We are South Africans artists who have recently learned that in the course of your upcoming international tour (which will include Bulgaria, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey) the Red Hot Chili Peppers are also planning to perform in Israel in September.
We appeal to you to heed the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel. As you may know, the boycott enjoys the support of the overwhelming amount of Palestinian civil society (including artists and artist groups) and an increasing number of progressive Israelis.
You might wonder what purpose refusing to perform in Israel might serve? As a people whose parents and grandparents suffered under (and resisted) Apartheid in South Africa, our history is testament to the value and legitimacy that the international boycott had in bringing an end to the Apartheid regime in our country. When artists and sportspeople began refusing to perform in South Africa, the world’s eyes turned to the injustices that were happening here. This then created a wave of pressure on politicians and world leaders representing their constituencies, to insist on a regime-change – this contributed to a free, democratic and non-racial South Africa. The same is not only possible for Palestine-Israel, but inevitable. The question is: on which side of history do you want to be? Performing in Apartheid South Africa during the 80s, or in Israel today, is choosing to be on the wrong side of history.
As South Africans, we recognise the role that internationally-recognised artists like yourselves played in helping us to end apartheid in our country. It is this recognition, along with our belief in you, that leads us to join the many others around the world who are calling on you to cancel this part of your tour.
We understand how difficult it would be for you to reject an opportunity to share your enthusiasm and skills with others. Bands like you are the reason artists want to exist. Your music motivates beyond concert stages, penetrating into the intimate personal spaces of individual human lives and transforming them forever, the way only true art can.
Unhappily, matters are not so simple in this context. Art does not simply take place in a vacuum. The belief that cultural activities are “apolitical” (or that you are simply performing music, not getting involved in politics) is a myth. You performing in Israel will be a slap in the face of Palestinians (who have, since 2005, asked international artists not to perform there) but it will also be tacit support for the Israeli regime and its practices of apartheid.
The audiences before whom you would perform at Haryakon Park in Tel Aviv will not include your Palestinian fans from Gaza or the West Bank – they are barred from traveling to Tel Aviv. They are excluded, like how Blacks were excluded under Apartheid in South Africa, by laws which shut them out of places in a land which, historically, is as much their own as those who are permitted to attend.
These are laws which the International Court of Justice (the highest court on this earth) has declared to be illegal and in violation of international human rights law, just as apartheid was declared to be illegal in our country. The Court found that the fundamental rights of people who would otherwise be enjoying your performances have been violated and their rights to a cultural life and to self-determination denied. By agreeing to perform before segregated audiences – whether in Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank – the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be used by those responsible to claim legitimacy (with or without your consent) for the injustices and humiliations they are inflicting on Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza as well as those living anywhere else in Israel.
From our own experience of the cultural boycott of South Africa which we ourselves called for, we had no sense of being its unwilling victims and isolated from the rest of the world. In fact, our experience was precisely to the contrary – we were strengthened by a powerful sense of world-wide solidarity with us and support in our struggle for freedom.
As Palestinians (and an increasing numbers of progressive Israelis) have themselves called for the boycott, we have no doubt that they will feel as heartened and encouraged in their struggle as we were.
We urge to you to stand by them, to exclude Israel from your tour, and be on the right side of history.
Joni Barnard, Mpho Madi, Aslam Bulbulia and the rest of the SA Artists Against Apartheid collective
‘Tragically for Palestinians, Zionism requires the state to empower and maintain a Jewish majority even at the expense of its non-Jewish citizens, and the occupation of the West Bank is only one part of it. What exists today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is therefore essentially one state, under Israeli control, where Palestinians have varying degrees of limited rights: 1.5 million are second-class citizens, and four million more are not citizens at all. If this is not apartheid, then whatever it is, it’s certainly not democracy. ‘
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton presented on Thursday the State Department’s 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices that criticizes Israel for its treatment of African migrants, an issue vigorously debated in Israeli public discourse lately.
The report states that Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers, which are about 85 percent of African migrants in Israel “were not allowed access to asylum procedures but were given renewable ‘conditional release’ documents that deferred deportation and had to be renewed every few months.”
The report quotes statistics provided by the UNHCR, showing that during the year out of 4,603 new asylum applications 3,692 were rejected. Only one was approved. 6,412 cases remained pending at year’s end.
The report also critically mentioned that the Israeli government officials “often negatively referred to asylum seekers as ‘infiltrators’ and periodically characterized asylum seekers as directly associated with rises in crime, disease, and terrorism.”
The report specifically mentions December 2011 interview of the Minister of Interior Eli Yishai with the IDF radio, in which he promised to “ensure that the last of the Sudanese, and the Eritreans, and all of the infiltrators, to the last of them, will return to their countries.”
Members of the Irish media absorbed in pillorying human rights activists who called on Irish band Dervish to boycott apartheid Israel might instead consider the declaration of South African Artists Against Apartheid below. It appears these Irish ‘journalists’ are incapable of reading the threads on Dervish’s facebook wall in order to ascertain the facts about where the ‘avalanche of negativity’ referred to by singer Cathy Jordan actually emanated from – in fact, it oozed from fanatical defenders of Israeli apartheid after the band announced its respect for boycott.
Cathy Jordan of Dervish said “I abhor all violence for whatever reason. I loathe any violations of people’s human rights and dignity, and I believe that all citizens have the right to live in peace, free from persecution. I’m an idealist, a pacifist, a humanitarian.” Her words resonate well with the principled boycott of Israel which addresses non-violently the apartheid state’s crimes against humanity. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is inspired by the successful boycott of apartheid South Africa, and the call to the international community by Palestinian people to boycott is grounded solidly in international human rights law, affirmative of justice, freedom and equality. It was in this positive humanist spirit that Dervish was encouraged by human rights activists to cancel its date with apartheid Israel.
As South African Artists and Cultural Workers who have lived under, survived, and in many cases resisted apartheid, we acknowledge the value of international solidarity in our own struggle. It is in this context that we respond to the call by Palestinians, and their Israeli allies, for such solidarity.
As artists of conscience we say no to apartheid – anywhere. We respond to the call for international solidarity and undertake not to avail any invitation to perform or exhibit in Israel. Nor will we accept funding from institutions linked to the government of Israel. This is our position until such time as Israel, in the least, complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. Until then, we too unite with international colleagues under the banner of “Artists Against Apartheid.”
Apartheid and Collaborating with it
Collaborating with institutions linked to the state of Israel cannot be regarded as a neutral act in the name of cultural exchange.
In an official report commissioned by the South African government in 2009, the Human Sciences Research Council confirmed that Israel, by its policies and practices, is guilty of the crime of apartheid. Numerous others, including South Africans who have a deep familiarity with racial oppression (and resistance to it), have spoken of life in the shadow of Israeli repression as akin to or worse to that under apartheid in South Africa.
Artistic performances in Israel promote a “business as usual” attitude that normalizes and “whitewashes” a state that is guilty of daily forms of exclusion, violence and war crimes. Operation Cast Lead in Gaza saw over 400 children killed by the Israeli military; and the unconscionable attack by Israel in international waters aboard the Freedom Flotilla resulted in the death of nine humanitarian aid workers. (Both have been described as crimes in violation of international law – the former by the 2009 Goldstone report and the latter by the UN Human Rights Council.)
As artists of conscience we can act to resist the normalization of Israel’s apartheid policies. Some may hide behind the excuse that art is apolitical. However, artists have not been hesitant in taking a position against racism and inequality. As South Africans we benefited from such a position of conscience. For example, members of the British Musicians’ Union, pledged not to perform in South Africa as long as apartheid was in effect. Numerous organizations and artists in film, television, theatre and other arts fell in line against the South African regime and contributed to the denormalisation of South African apartheid which eventually led to that regime’s demise – and to the birth of a free and democratic country, for all.
Joining the International Momentum
Inspired by the boycott of Apartheid South Africa, Palestinians have made a call for a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign of Israel. This call has been actively supported by Israelis as well.
British writer John Berger, Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, US poet Adrienne Rich, British film director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty are just some of the prominent voices that have joined this call. In a movement that continues to gain momentum, a string of artists have recently either cancelled shows or pledged their refusal to be complicit in Israeli Apartheid. Some names include: Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, Dustin Hoffman, Meg Ryan, Faithless and Massive Attack. For futher details, refer to the attached Record Sheet.
“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 for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel.”
“Cape Town Opera should postpone its proposed tour next month until both Israeli and Palestinian opera lovers of the region have equal opportunity and unfettered access to attend performances.”
“the thickest-skinned South Africans would be comfortable performing before an audience that excluded residents living, for example, in an occupied West Bank village 30 minutes from Tel Aviv, who would not be allowed to travel to Tel Aviv, while including his Jewish neighbours from an illegal settlement on occupied Palestinian territory.”
“The Tel Aviv Opera House is state sponsored. By luring international artists to perform there, it advances Israel’s fallacious claim to being a ‘civilized democracy’. Yet, every day, millions of citizens are denied the right to educational and cultural opportunities in Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies.”
“Please, fine singers of the Cape Town Opera: Much as it offers you opportunities to travel abroad and show the world what we can do, listen to your conscience. God loves Jews and Muslims equally. To perform Porgy and Bess, with its universal message of non-discrimination, in the present state of Israel, is unconscionable.”
Israel uses culture shamelessly and deliberately to promote its political branding, to obscure its crimes against humanity given impunity by the failure by governments to enforce international law. Soon after the Palestinian boycott was called in 2005, Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, a deputy director general from the Israeli Foreign Ministry said: “We are seeing culture as a hasbara tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture”.
Another BDS win in South Africa – “BDS spokesman Muhammed Desai said in a statement that Ayee’s announcement came at the request of students and staff, as hosting Finkelstein would have violated the “academic boycott” of Israel. ” That’s Yaakov Finkelstein, deputy ambassador. SA university pulls plug on Israeli Embassy
‘Professor Ayee’s announcement came after the university was called on by students and staff to cancel the hosting of Finkelstein as it would have violated the “academic boycott” of Israel. Palestinians issued a call to the international community in 2005 for a program of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until Israel abides by international law and basic human rights.
Early last year, another SA University, the University of Johannesburg, became the world’s first university to impose an academic boycott on Israel by ending its institutional relation with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. In addition several student movements, including the South African Students Congress (SA’s largest and oldest studdent body), have publicly backed the academic boycott and BDS call.
UKZN School of Social Sciences senior lecturer, Dr Lubna Nadvi commented:”This is a positive and encouraging move by UKZN. Israel is fast becoming a pariah state, like Apartheid South Africa did, that no one really wants to be associated with – including academics and students. It can be safe to assume that UKZN’s cancellation represents the general sentiment among students and staff”.’
