BDS | KADAITCHA

January 5, 2014December 11, 2020

From Gaza to Moddi – Thank You

4 January 2014

Dearest Moddi,

Besieged Gaza, Palestine- We, academics, students and youth from besieged Gaza, wish to salute you for your principled and audacious decision not to entertain apartheid and violate the cultural boycott of Israel – a key aspect of the general BDS call from Palestinian civil society.

The moment we learned about your cancellation of the Tel Aviv show, we celebrated, with an obvious relief, the fact that someone is hearing our voices. Such a relief has become a rare commodity with the many escalating difficulties and challenges we have been enduring since Israel has imposed a medieval siege on our tiny strip. Just yesterday, 16-year-old Adnan Abu Khater died of his wounds after Israeli soldiers shot him in the leg east of Jabaliya. As this letter is penned, Gaza, the coastal, old and beautiful city that is no longer remembered for being the hub of historical sites, cultural hideaways and vibrant commerce, sinks into darkness with a continuous power outage for long hours daily. But you have reached us. Your act of solidarity has replaced our anxiety and frustration with hope, true hope, and replaced our pessimism with inspiration that there are more people in this world who won’t turn their backs on the calls for justice to arrive on our shores. Your connection with us goes beyond the mourning of our broken hearts.

By heeding our call, you have chosen to join a list of principled artists who have prioritized principles and altruistic commitment to human rights over immediate personal gains.

With deep regard and gratitude,

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Gaza BDS Working Group

The One Democratic State Group – Gaza

University Teachers’ Association

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel

SOURCE

December 30, 2013December 30, 2013

Cyndi Lauper – Choose Equality, Don’t Entertain Violent Segregation

Cyndi Lauper, the country you are planning to entertain imposes violent segregation, not equality

By Leehee Rothchild

I’m glad that you believe in equality, so do I. Unfortunately, my country doesn’t. In the state of Israel, equality is a word frequently used, but rarely practiced.

In the occupied territories, under Israel’s control, in East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, Palestinians and Israeli settlers share the same ground, but that’s all they share. There are separate legal systems, military for Palestinians, civil for Israeli, segregated roads, buses, and check points. There are different water quotas, and different building permits, as in, none of those for Palestinians. Settlers have freedom of movement, of work, of protest, of speech, Palestinians have none of those.

Every Palestinian protest is violently suppressed by the Israeli army. Also, most of the Palestinians living in the West Bank, cannot cross into Israel, whereas all settlers can do that. Many of them, will probably come to your show. It goes without saying that all of the Palestinians living in Gaza, under siege since 2006, will not be able to make it. Many of them are without electricity, 16 hours a day, fuel is running out. Medical operations are made in candle light, and many pay with their lives, for the fuel shortage created by Israel’s closure of the strip’s borders.

As for those Palestinians who are so-called citizens of the State of Israel. Yes, they have citizenship, but their equal status begins and ends with this piece of paper. They don’t get equal funding, for school, for welfare, for infrastructures. The Israeli education system invests 8 times more in an Israeli pupil, than in a Palestinian one. Most Palestinian towns get no public transport, and not a single train station operates in any of those. The state of Israel operates in order to Judaeise areas in which there’s a high concentration of Palestinians, such as the Naqab or the Galilee. These programmes include the demolition of Palestinian houses, the eviction of Palestinian citizens, and the expropriation of Palestinian lands. As for romantic relationships between Palestinians and Israelis, there are several organizations, supported by various Members of the Knesset, that are working to intimidate such couples, with insults, humiliations and violent threats. Such a couple will never be able to get married inside Israel, as only religious marriages are possible. And while we’re on the subject I’ll add a word about lack of equality against non-Palestinians. I’m living in a religious state, in which as a woman, I can never get equal status. I’m living in a state in which state-funded buses operate, on which women are boarding from the back, and men are boarding from the front, to cater for an orthodox community, whose equality, seems to be more important than my own. I’m living in a state in which there’s a religious court system in which only men can serve as judges, and these men decide on every matter of marriage and divorce, according to laws set more than 2000 years ago. I’m also living in a state that as we speak, rounds up African refugees into an enormous prison, for the sole crime, of seeking asylum.

Dear Cyndi, we both believe in equality, we believe in freedom, in peace, in justice, and I hope that some day, we can celebrate them together. But you can’t find freedom, where there is occupation, you can’t find justice under apartheid, you can’t find equality in the state of Israel.

December 28, 2013December 11, 2020

Moddi, Don’t Entertain Israel, the Oppressor of Palestinians

Open letter from Gaza to Moddi: Do Not Entertain Our Oppressor!

Dear Moddi

[Besieged Gaza, Palestine] We are a group of academics, students and youth from Gaza, and our only fault is being born Palestinian. You might think we are in an era from where you should not be murdered, tortured, forced to leave your houses and villages, denied water and electricity, restricted movement, imprisoned and regularly harassed and humiliated – all because of who you are when you are born, because of what is written on your identity card. But this encapsulates the reality of our entire lives for decades under the Israeli Apartheid that you are intending to entertain on 1st February and we implore you to take a stand by refusing to perform there.

The Israeli occupation of our land is the longest running in modern history. In Gaza we are in the seventh year of the Israeli imposed, medieval siege with our families and loved ones in what major Human Rights Organizations call the largest open air prison in modern history. Two thirds of us are UN registered refugees still dreaming of a return to our homes – the hundreds of Palestinian villages, towns and cities destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, tanks and missiles. The state you are planning to entertain is committed to a process of ethnic cleansing against us the indigenous people, a process that began with the Nakba in 1948. And now it is engaged in, what the Israeli academic Ilan Pappe calls, “slow motion genocide” against the 1.7 million population of Gaza, the majority of whom are children.

As this letter is penned from a refugee camp near Gaza City, it is Christmas Eve. And now the news comes through from East of Al-Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza, that 3 year old Hala Abu Sabikha has been killed by shrapnel from an Israeli shelling. Her mother and her brothers, 3 year old Bilal and 6 year old Mohammad were injured while standing outside their house near a chicken farm. How will their family ever recover, overcome with permanent grief and loss from Gaza’s depleted hospital wards while those celebrating Christmas day in Norway and the rest of Europe sit in silence?

Hundreds of Palestinian Christians in Gaza are denied by Israel the possibility of going to Bethlehem, a one hour drive, for Mass this Christmas, and many more are denied entry coming from countries from outside. The Israeli regime controls all points of entry to Palestine.

We love music. But, we are deprived of it. For years musical instruments were one of those items banned from entering by Israel’s blockade, along with toys, pasta, school books and chocolate. The sound of Israeli-US made F16s, F15s, F35s, surveillance planes, white phosphorous bombs, naval gunboats and Merkava tanks drown the music and song that we delight in performing and listening to. Even listening to music on computers is impossible – in the last few months the Israeli siege and attacks on our power supply means we are now limited to 6 hours of electricity a day! The sewage system has also collapsed and many of the camps are flooded. Yet this is not an environmental disaster, this is imposed by the regime to which you plan on bringing your music.

Do you know that most of the people in your audience will have served or are serving in the Israeli army? You are aware that we in Gaza could never cross the Israeli checkpoints to enjoy your music because we are Palestinian, born to mothers who do not have the “right” religion? We call upon your free soul that has been adding uplifting music into this disenchanted world of ours, to join those courageous people of conscience, artists like Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Massive Attack, Gil Scott-Heron, Faithless, Carlos Santana, Vanessa Paradis, Natacha Atlas and Devendra Banhart. They are heeding the call to boycott Israel until it complies with international law, and until justice and accountability are reached just as the global Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement helped make way for the collapse of apartheid in South Africa.

The late, great Nelson Mandela said “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu on his visits to Palestine described some of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as worse than apartheid. Would you have performed in Apartheid South Africa? How would that look now? Endorsing the 2005 Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Tutu described as ‘unconscionable’ the prospect of the South African ‘Cape Town Opera’ performing in Israel earlier this year.

We ask you now, like so many people of your nation have stood with the oppressed in the past, to stand on the right side of history, to respond to our call from the Gaza ghetto to not turn your back on us. If you play in Israel, then we will be a short distance away from where you are playing. But your beautiful tunes will break our wrenching hearts and not sway our souls.

Don’t entertain Apartheid this February 1st

Palestinian Students for the Academic Boycott of Israel

University Teachers’ Association

SOURCE

October 29, 2013August 24, 2022

Australian academic faces Israeli lawfare attack from the Shurat HaDin

The right to criticize the policies of another country are at stake

Today an Israeli based law centre, Shurat HaDin, filed a case in the Federal Court of Australia, against Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. They claim that he has supported policies which are racist and discriminatory by his specific endorsement of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals representing them. Jake Lynch has refused collaboration with Hebrew University because of its support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and close connections with the Israeli armament industry.

This lawfare attack against academic freedom and freedom of speech has been condemned by over 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries, who have all signed a pledge supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel because of its well documented and clear violations of international and humanitarian law, and offering to be co-defendants in any legal action taken against Lynch.

Shurat HaDin has taken many similar actions internationally against groups who support the BDS movement. Professor Stuart Rees comments, “It seems that this firm, Shurat HaDin works in the civil courts as a proxy for the Israeli government and security forces, seeking to shut down any criticism of the state of Israel and its ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

In August, Shurat HaDin lodged a complaint in the Human Rights Commission against Jake Lynch’s refusal to sponsor an Israeli academic from the Hebrew University, now they want to silence this highly regarded academic, by taking their complaint to the Federal Court. This challenges the right to take non violent action in support international human rights law and the rights of the dispossessed Palestinians. Australians for BDS condemns racism in all forms, and specifically anti-Semitism.

“Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing machinery continue unabated but the moral force that used to drive that process is fast eroding and, as out of touch as the Abbott government and anti-BDS activists in Australia may be, there is an undeniable shift in the balance of moral power. International civil society is holding Israel to account in a way no government has ever been able to do”.

Press release by Randa Abdel Fattah, Australian Palestinian lawyer and writer.

Press conference with Professor Stuart Rees and Professor Peter Slezak
Date: WED Oct 30th (today)
Time: 2pm
Location: Queen’s Square, Junction of King, Phillip and Macquarie Streets, Sydney (St James Station)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen’s_Square,_Sydney

UPDATE

Professor Peter Slezak speaks at the press conference:

September 17, 2013December 11, 2020

Amanda Palmer, Please Don’t Normalize with Apartheid

Dear Amanda Palmer,

We appreciate your engagement with the cultural boycott in your statement on your blog [1], and would like to clarify to you that while your kickstarter house party does not fall within the ambit of the Palestinian-led boycott, because of its private nature and the absence of institutional backing, the gig at which you plan to play at the Barby would cross the boycott picket line.

To use a fact-finding tour with the Israeli organisation, Breaking the Silence “to see the areas they’re talking about”, as a kind of whitewashing of a contravention of the boycott is unacceptable.

We would hope you instead do make the effort, as did Jello Biafra [2], to view the results of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and then decide against breaching the boycott by playing at a public venue in Israel.

Would you have countenanced a tour of the apartheid South African bantustans with a white organisation and still played Sun City? We encourage you to listen to Palestinian voices who ask artists to respect the boycott and to realise that voices from the community of the Israeli oppressors do not represent Palestinians, and indeed often serve to silence and obscure the Palestinian message using deceptive words of ‘peace’ and ‘co-existence’. Palestinian people, in contrast, are asking you to co-resist with them in solidarity by respecting their boycott call.

As the PACBI (the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) has explained:

‘we simply ask that they do the sensible thing and stay away from Israel until they are knowledgeable enough about the “situation.” Artists are not being asked by one or two local individuals to boycott Israel, which could be dismissed as uninformed or unrepresentative of the common interest. In the Palestinian case, artists are being asked to respect the cultural boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions by a majority of Palestinian civil society, over 170 organizations from across the political and social spectrum, and especially by a great majority of Palestinian artists and cultural figures. If the Palestinian near-consensus is not sufficient to convince them, then they can at least refrain from performing, accepting prizes, or exhibiting art in Israel until they have visited the occupied Palestinian territory and spoken with exiled Palestinian refugees’.[3]

Some artists who played and then became aware of Israel’s oppression and the legitimacy of the boycott, like Macy Gray [4], Roger Waters [5] and Denise Jannah [6], later regretted their performances and would not have played had they known then what they later discovered.

Please refrain from playing at the Barby, please don’t breach the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions call and do make the effort also to find out more for yourself about Israel’s occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.

DPAI (Don’t Play Apartheid Israel)
We are a group, of over 1300 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.

Notes:

[1] http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130912/
[2] Jello Biafra cancels his Tel Aviv gig http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora/jello-biafra-cancels-his-tel-aviv-gig
[3] Artists Violating Cultural Boycott of Israel: Moral Inconsistency and Logical Incoherence http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1582
[4] Macy Gray Regrets Feb Concert in Tel Aviv Israel
http://refrainplayingisrael.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/macy-gray-regrets-feb-concert-in-tel-aviv-israel/
[5] BDS Roundup: Alice Walker, Roger Waters call on Alicia Keys to cancel Tel Aviv show
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora/bds-roundup-alice-walker-roger-waters-call-alicia-keys-cancel-tel-aviv-show
[6] Denise Jannah Expresses Support for BDS
https://www.kadaitcha.com/2011/09/18/denise-jannah-and-ramon-valles-now-support-bds/

See also:

Open Letter to Amanda Palmer: There is a profound ethical obligation to refuse to play in Israel http://refrainplayingisrael.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/open-letter-to-amanda-palmer-there-is.html