You may have heard about the growing movement of people who stand in solidarity with Palestinians and their struggle for human rights. You may have heard of Boycott, Divest and Sanctions against Israel (BDS). This is a people’s movement, and a growing number of musicians are choosing to be a part of BDS.
In 2006, the majority of Palestinian civil society united to ask artists like you to respect their call for a cultural boycott of Israel. [1] We are confident that, seeing the facts of Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and colonialism, you will decide to refrain from playing in Israel until justice is delivered to the oppressed Palestinian people.
This grassroots global people’s movement is the only foreseeable way to end Israel’s crimes. The United Nations, despite numerous resolutions against Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, has not ensured that Israel is forced to comply with international law.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said
“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.”
Roger Waters, founder of Pink Floyd, emphasised
“Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.”
Playing in Israel today, in violation of the boycott call, sends two messages:
The artist has chosen to ignore the Palestinian people’s call for solidarity through BDS.
The musician is aware of and accepts that the Israeli Ministry of Culture will endeavor to use an artist’s name to legitimize and promote the current oppressive, racist, apartheid government through social media like Twitter[2], through press releases, and via the CCFP. [3]
Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, former deputy director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, stated “We are seeing culture as a hasbara [propaganda] tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture.” [4]
We hope you will refrain from playing in Israel, playing Tel Aviv has been compared to playing in Sun City during South African apartheid. A musician does not need to play in Israel in order to “see” the human rights violations that are going on there.
Cat Power, this is your opportunity to be a part of a people’s movement and to choose to stand NOT with Israeli crimes against humanity, but with a movement that Belgium filmmaker Chris den Hond calls one of the “most prominent international grassroots movements against the Israeli policy of occupation and colonization of historic Palestine.” [5]
Over 11 million people are oppressed by Israel’s violations of human rights against non-Jews. Howard Zinn referred to both American “western expansion” and Israel’s occupation of land as “ethnic cleansing.” [6] People were and still are forced from their homes, and made into refugees. Gaza was made into a crowded, Israeli-controlled open-air jail. The West Bank is surrounded by an apartheid wall and sprinkled with over 500 roadblocks and checkpoints. [7]
While Israel presents itself as a democracy, in fact it is a democracy only for Jews, whilst indigenous Palestinians, most particularly in the Occupied Territories, are treated as less than human. Palestinians, lesser citizens within Israel itself, are discriminated against by 43 laws privileging Jews at their expense.[8]
Please cancel your concert, do it for Shabrawi and Ezz ad-Deen, the two Palestinian children whose story was recently featured in The Guardian [9]. These two boys lived through solitary confinement, interrogation, shackling of hands and feet, verbal abuse (“You’re a dog, a son of a whore” – is common), sleep deprivation, and threats against their families.
We hope you’ll choose not to play in Israel while so many children are suffering just miles away from Tel Aviv.
We are a group, of over 830 members, representing many nations around the globe, who believe that it is essential for musicians & 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.
“Aboriginal people want to talk about many issues, including economic development, sovereignty, land rights and treaty. These may be uncomfortable issues for the Australian people, but they are issues that must be resolved, sooner rather than later.”
Genocide is not just wiping people out in concentration camps, or forcing them to assimilate.
It is also stealing their land so they can no longer exist as a people, Tony. Dispossession is genocide. And that is what the Northern Territory intervention is about, tony. Driving aboriginal people off their land. That’s happening too in the major mining areas of Australia.
Protesting against politicians who rudely and publicly suggest to Aboriginal Australians that they might abandon one of the means of their ongoing struggle – the 40 year old Tent Embassy – seems unacceptable to white colonial Australians and their housies who demand politeness from those whom they oppress. At the Lobby restaurant, protesters from the Tent Embassy were angered by Tony Abbott’s comment made earlier in the day that it was “probably time to move on from that”. In the context of Invasion and Survival Day, nationalist white colonial chest-thumping and four year long criminalNorthern Territory Intervention whereby basic human rights of Aboriginal Australians are withdrawn, Abbott’s comment predictably was regarded as offensive.
Mr Anderson said the comments were disrespectful.
“He said the Aboriginal embassy had to go; we heard it on a radio broadcast,” he said.
“We thought no way, so we circled around the building.”
He said the protesters wanted the leaders to clarify their position and whether Mr Abbott was serious about removing the embassy.
“You’ve got 1,000 people here peacefully protesting, and to make a statement about tearing down the embassy – it’s just madness on the part of Tony Abbott.
A contingent of about 100 protesters made their way up the road to The Lobby and surrounded it. Though they were loud and noisy they were non-violent. Security blocked the protesters from getting close to the restaurant for a while but it didn’t take long for a few protesters to break the line and soon the rest had gotten close up against the restaurant’s walls. As the walls of The Lobby are made of glass the protesters could look in and see Mr Abbott and the others pretending not to hear them and, after about ten or fifteen minutes Julia Gillard’s white jacket was recognised and the protesters realised that she was in there along with Mr Abbott.
The aim of the protest had been to get Mr. Abbott to come out and talk to the crowd – now it wanted to get Ms. Gillard to come out and do the same as well. Yet they continued to ignore the protesters, drink champagne and take photos of one another while their constituents tried to get their attention.
A short time later a contingent of riot police and protective service officers arrived at the restaurant. All up there were about 50 to 60 officers there and protesters watched on as a group of about 20 riot police hurtled past them in V-formation, bursting into the restaurant and then locking themselves inside.
When I spoke to Sam she said that the protesters thought the riot police were arranging to form a sort of guard around the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader so that they could come out and talk to the crowd but, as the rest of the media has shown, the riot police’s real objective was to ‘escort’ the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader to their cars.
As more protesters made their way to the restaurant, the riot police charged out the doors, practically dragging Ms Gillard along, while the onlookers began to shout “where are you going?” and “why won’t you talk to us?” As the cars drove off, some people threw plastic water bottles and water at the cars.
At this point things began to get fairly nasty; one protester was knocked into the rose bushes and one gigantic cop started brandishing a can of tear gas or capsicum spray (reports differ on this point) in people’s faces and shoved Sam, another girl and a female photo-journalist in the head. When Sam told him to calm down he reportedly bared his teeth and grinned so widely his eyes nearly popped out of his head; to many on site it was fairly clear that the officer was barely under control.
Then the police began to link arms to form a line against the protesters and the protesters followed suit, ending up with a Mexican standoff. Some of the Indigenous Elders called for the protesters to return to the Tent Embassy but a female Elder began a non-violent sit-down protest in the road just down from the café and soon a line of Indigenous women, female Elders and non-Indigenous women had been formed across the road.
The women declared that they were not going to be intimidated by the police and that they would not move until the police stood down. While some of the other protesters returned to the Tent Embassy, a large group (including some of the Occupy Melbourne contingent) remained to watch on and support their fellow activists until the police eventually gave in and stood down.
As the remaining protesters made their way back to the Tent Embassy they were greeted by applause and the female protesters went through a cleansing smoke ceremony.
Several eye witnesses in the report above confirm there was no violence amongst the protesters, and it was the police who were violent. The white colonial Gubbahs have failed to sanction their own, instead blaming the protesters.
The cops reacted as they always do when confronted by angry Aboriginal people.
The riot squad and the Prime Minister’s protection unit brutalised the crowd to clear a path for Gillard and Abbott, the two politicians of the Northern Territory invasion, the two politicians of hate, the two politicians of dispossession, the two politicians of aboriginal genocide.
Why is non-violence never expected of settler colonial oppressors?
Mr Abbott said he never suggested it was time for the Aboriginal tent embassy itself to “move on”.
“I was asked a question (and) I made the point, a lot’s happened in 40 years and I think we have moved on from the issues … that caused the Aboriginal tent embassy to be setup,” he said
‘Aboriginal Australians have been no different from the Palestinians in fighting back against ethnic cleansing and settler-colonisation. Our people actually carried out an extensive armed resistance to European settler colonialism. This resistance began the moment Cook set foot on Australian soil in 1770 – the Gweagal people attacked Cook’s landing party with spears and woomeras. From that moment on Aboriginal resistance never ceased.
Prior to Invasion Day 2012, Michael Anderson, the “last survivor of the four young Black Power men who set up the Aboriginal Embassy in 1972” said he had “received intelligence that there is a move to destroy him personally and the Aboriginal sovereignty movement in which he plays a large role”.
Recently, during a visit by my mother and sister to Goodooga, my mother warned me that I need to be very well protected, because the government will find Aboriginal people to cause disruption to the sovereignty movement and threaten my life.
I have a very good idea of where the trouble will come from, as police intelligence is aware of the threat to my life and the sovereignty movement and that the people involved will commence a campaign to first character assassinate me to win support to reject me, thereby nullifying the sovereignty movement, by creating enormous divisions; which would permit the Australian government to say publically: Aborigines will never come together as a united body to fight for their sovereign status.
The First Nations Parliament wishes to return Julia’s shoe, lost during the rush to her vehicle.
Paul Coe, spokesperson for the First Nations Parliament, an organisation which has been re-established as a result of the anniversary celebrations, said Embassy activists were disgusted at the behavior of police.
“We’re appalled at the violence we saw today directed against the Prime Minister, and the tactics police employed to try and intimidate members of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, who were peacefully protesting at a family gathering.
“There was no need for that number of police to be there, or to have that level of menace or intimidation.
“They overreacted without assessing whether or not there was any risk to the Prime Minister. The only violence came from police.
“There was no risk to the Prime Minister of Australia. No-one here would have hurt the Prime Minister. Even the Opposition leader was safe.
“I’d remind the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader that in 1972 the then leader of the Opposition Gough Whitlam and the late Lionel Murphy came and met with us in the tents. They never felt threatened.
“We wish to return the shoe to her as a gesture of friendship and in the spirit of cooperation. We hope she will turn up here tomorrow to accept it in the same spirit.
“It’s to show we mean no harm and will not tolerate any threats or intimidation against the Prime Minister of Australia.
“I am appalled that the Prime Minister felt intimidated or threatened in any way because the Prime Minister of Australia should not have to endure or tolerate any of those kinds of behavior directed at her, be it from police or anyone else.
“The shoe is now a symbol of trust between two nations of people.”
Mr Coe said the First Nations Parliament would be established with a year.
“We’re sending letters out to our lawmen and women asking them to meet with First Nations to convene our parliament and to draft our constitution.”
The organisation came about after meetings at the Tent Embassy celebrations.
“We have re-asserted our First Nation sovereign rights through the re-establishment of the First Nations Parliament (the AP was first formed in 1972),” Mr Coe said.
Julia may have lost a shoe, but Tony lost everything, with his fearful, racist paternalism exposed.
Michael Anderson may not have been too far off the mark, considering the tenor of today’s Australian Editorial, extolling colonial-friendly Aboriginal ‘leaders’ and minimising present Indigenous disadvantage and demands. The editorial censuriously accuses protesters of bullying while tutting about free speech, which the protesters were exercising:
“In short, as Mr Abbott suggested, events have moved beyond the grievances of the tent embassy. The former Labor premier of NSW, Bob Carr, wrote bluntly yesterday that it should be “packed up”. Brave and sensible indigenous leaders such as Warren Mundine and Mick Gooda have observed how the protest has been a blow against free speech. The bullying antics are aimed at silencing opponents. Even if someone had called for the tent embassy to be “torn down”, they should not be met with intimidation. “
Thus do the rightwing appropriate righteous victimhood. The Australian editor bleats blithely onward:
“As Meryl Tankard Reist, Ian Plimer or even Andrew Bolt can attest, the modern illiberal Left seems to care little for free speech unless that speech echoes their views. This is a disturbing tendency that The Weekend Australian will always seek to expose and counter. If Australia Day is to mean anything, we must embrace open minds, free speech and common sense. “
Mr Anderson said the Tent Embassy would pursue a legal challenge against the British Government.
He said the embassy had lawyers in London who would take their concerns to the European Court of Human Rights and possibly the International Court of Justice.
”England still has some residual obligation in Australia.
”So what we’re doing now is we’re investigating the legal ramifications of that 1875 Act which recognises when Queen Victoria said she did not claim sovereignty or dominion over Aboriginal lands of this country and the people.
”Our objective is to go after England because they failed to implement their law in this country.”
Mr Anderson said he had been advised that the Tent Embassy had the capacity to sue the British Government in the court system.
Mr Abbott yesterday tried to distance himself from his remarks, saying he did not advocate tearing down the tent embassy.
But conservative think tank Menzies House, co-founded by Mr Abbott’s colleague Cory Bernardi, has set up a petition calling for the embassy’s closure.
Some Aboriginal leaders have condemned the tent embassy activists, describing their behaviour as “appalling”.
But tent embassy co-founder Michael Anderson defended the violent protest and said the embassy was still important to promote Aboriginal rights.
Ms Gillard slammed the ugly scenes on Thursday.
“What I utterly condemn is when protests turn violent the way we saw the violence (on Thursday), and particularly disrupting an event which was to honour some extraordinary Australians,” she said.
Opposition attack dog Christopher Pyne said he would be surprised if Mr Hodges acted alone.
They rushed a nearby restaurant upon hearing Mr Abbott was inside.
Earlier, radio presenter Ray Hadley reported a staffer to Ms Gillard had rung Aboriginal tent embassy protester Barbara Shaw, or another protester, that Mr Abbott had called for the embassy to be torn down.
“Once she was told that, she was also told Mr Abbott was across the road (and) ‘maybe you can give them a bit of a liven up’,” the 2GB presenter told his audience.
The statement from Ms Gillard’s office did not address the allegation that Mr Hodges sought to inform tent embassy activists of Mr Abbott’s alleged comments.
Mr Abbott earlier declared he’d been “verballed”, saying he had not said the tent embassy should be removed.
“I never said that and I don’t think that,” he said.
“I made the point that a lot has happened in 40 years and I think that we have moved on from the issues of 40 years ago which caused the Aboriginal tent embassy to be set up.”
Ms Shaw, who told the protesters Mr Abbott wanted the tent embassy disbanded, said she heard of Mr Abbott’s comments from “a fly on the wall”.
After Ms Gillard was bundled into a waiting car and whisked away, a protester displayed one of Ms Gillard’s blue high-heel shoes, which had fallen off during her hasty exit, and shouted: ”Gingerella, come get your shoe!”
Senior indigenous leaders such as social justice commissioner Mick Gooda and Warren Mundine are dismayed at what happened on Thursday,
but a tent embassy organiser called them “handpicked puppets” who did not represent grassroots Aboriginal people.
Michael Anderson, the last surviving member of the original four that established the tent embassy in 1972, denied the ugly protest had set back the indigenous movement.
“You fellas can … dwell on that and stay there, but right now we’re passed that,” he said.
The protest was not violent. It was certainly rowdy and confronting. The protesters chanted loudly and angrily, and some beat time on the glass walls of the restaurant. There was some pushing and shoving as the VIP cars finally moved out. Police on the day said there were “scuffles” and no arrests would be made.
…
You know there has never been any compensation, nor has the legal situation fundamentally changed. The contemptuous white attitude of the past persists today in the intervention in the Northern Territory, which was imposed by Tony Abbott’s party and continued by the Prime Minister’s party.
The intervention blatantly belies Abbott’s and Gillard’s claims that things are better than 40 years ago and that most Australians have respect for Indigenous people. Respect would involve looking together for a way forward, not draconian and racist income management and displacement from traditional country.
“As I said in my statement yesterday, Tony Hodges from the Prime Minister’s office told me what Tony Abbott had said – that people should ‘move on’ from the tent embassy,” she said.
“Yesterday the Prime Minister gave an accurate account of my role.”
According to the Israeli promoters, Merrill Garbus said the cancellation of the tUnE-yArDs gig at the Barby in Tel Aviv was for personal reasons, but they believe it was political.
Merrill Garbus is a signatory of the 500 Artists Against Israeli Apartheid letter published in February 2010, so it’s fair to think the cancellation indeed was political.
Montreal artists are now joining this international campaign to concretely protest the Israeli state’s ongoing denial of the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties, as stipulated in and protected by international law, as well as Israel’s ongoing occupation and colonization of the West Bank (including Jerusalem) and Gaza, which also constitutes a violation of international law and multiple United Nations resolutions.
Palestinian citizens face an entrenched system of racial discrimination and segregation, resembling the defeated apartheid system in South Africa. A matrix of Israeli-only roads, electrified fences, and over 500 military checkpoints and roadblocks erase freedom of movement for Palestinians. Israel’s apartheid wall, which was condemned by the International Court of Justice in 2004, cuts through Palestinian lands, further annexing Palestinian territory and surrounding Palestinian communities with electrified barbed wire fences and a concrete barrier soaring eight meters high.
Gaza remains under siege. Israel continues to impose collective punishment on the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, who still face chronic shortages of electricity, fuel, food and basic necessities as the campaign of military violence executed by the apartheid state of Israel endures. UN officials recently observed that the “situation has deteriorated into a full-fledged emergency because of the cut-off of vital supplies for Palestinians.” As a result of Israeli actions, Gaza has become a giant prison.
The global movement against Israeli apartheid, supported by a large majority of Palestinian civil society, is not targeted at individual Israelis but at Israeli institutions that are complicit in maintaining the multi-tiered Israeli system of oppression against the Palestinian people.
In fact, the Palestinian civil society BDS call, launched by over 170 Palestinian organisations in 2005, explicitly appeals to conscientious Israelis, urging them to support international efforts to bring about Israel’s compliance with international law and fundamental human rights, essential elements for a justice-based peace in the region. The present appeal is also rooted in an active engagement with many progressive Israeli artists and activists who are working on a daily basis for peace and justice while supporting the growing global movement in opposition to Israeli apartheid.
Israel uses all culture as propaganda to obscure and solidify its oppression – its use of music and musicians is no exception. A ubiquitous catchcry of Israel’s hasbara diplomats, many of whom are now paid for their efforts, is “Music should cross borders, not create them”. Yet in breaking the boycott, musicians undermine the peaceful tactic which Palestinian people have chosen to struggle for their rights. Musicians who respect the boycott conscientiously choose to support non-violent resistance to terrible injustice.
Israeli apartheid creates borders which no music can cross.
Rapper Talib Kweli rubs shoulders with British saxophonist Evan Parker, and the bassheads at Glitch Mob stand next to the Flaming Lips’ Kliph Scurlock. Alongside septuagenarians such as Roy Harper and Frederic Rzewski, there is Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus.
Islam Dar Ayyoub was arrested in the early hours of 23 January, when the Israeli forces entered his house at 2 a.m., asking for him. He had already been arrested earlier that month and held for several hours at Halamish settlement before being released. The family’s house had also been targeted twice that month for ‘mapping’ by the Israeli forces: an operation in which soldiers enter the house in the middle of the night, wake up its inhabitants and take photographs and ID numbers of all the men and children living there.
…
Whilst under interrogation at the police station Islam was threatened with electric shock treatment or attacks by dogs. His lawyer appeared at the police station but the Head of Interrogation of Judea and Samaria gave the order not to give him access as, according to him, Islam was beginning to admit to accusations and incriminate others, and the lawyer’s presence may ‘compromise the interrogation’. During his interrogation Islam was not informed of his right to remain silent nor of his right to seek legal counsel. It was only after approximately five hours of interrogation that he was allowed to see his lawyer who was waiting outside. By this time, he had already signed a statement in Hebrew on the understanding that if he did so his family would come and collect him and take him home. The statement, which he did not understand, incriminated Bassem and Naji Tamimi, two of the key protest organizers from Nabi Saleh. After signing the statement iron handcuffs were applied to him and he was taken by military car to Ofer detention center. After spending 3 days at Ofer, Islam was brought before a Military Judge
