“Any self-respecting liberal should be able to support the principles of freedom, justice and equality anywhere in the world.”
“Israel does not represent all Jews in the world and they are not a monolithic group.”
“Apartheid is a universal crime.”
“Whether exiled Palestinians want to return to Palestine, it is their inalienable right to do so.”
“Cultural boycott has grown rapidly with many artists refusing to tour in Israel.”
“Peace to the oppressed is meaningless without JUSTICE.”
“Churches and Mosques have been co-opted by the Israelis and used as cattle barns, bars, etc.”
“Self determination = ending all three forms of Israeli oppression”.
“11.22 million Palestinians in the world. 69% of the population are refugees”.
“Equality or nothing!” -Edward Said .”
“93% of the land in Israel is for Jews only”.
“At the very least, do no harm. Remove your support for Apartheid.” “Refuse to support evil.”
(I asked via @USACBI “would you please ask Omar whether he thinks the increased mobilisation by Israel against BDS is measure of effectiveness? and whether he sees any other signals from Israel as to the effectiveness of BDS?”)
“Israeli anti-boycott law shows Israel sees boycott as threatening & drops last vestiges of true democracy.”
“Israel cannot bomb ideas and morals into submission, which is why Palestinians should maintain the moral high ground”.
My comment: not taking a firm stand against all bigotry, prejudice and racism is cognitively dissonant with any movement grounded in human rights and discredits such a movement. It is the argument which is necessary to attack, rather than make speculation about behaviour. Personal attacks are always poor fallacious substitutes for argument.
Related Links
Omar Barghouti at the University of Maryland: “BDS is not a central command, it’s not a political party — it’s a global rights movement,” Barghouti said. “At the core of this is our deep belief that moral right can and should prevail over military might.”
The State of Israel’s official twitter channel *, maintained by the Foreign Ministry’s Digital Diplomacy Team has already claimed Gun N’ Roses as their trophy in support of metalwashing Israel, and tickets have not yet gone up for sale.
Metalwashing?
The trend to attract metal bands to play in Israel is not new. I’m going to take some credit for coining this little-known term. The concept was gleaned from the “pinkwashing” term, which has gone mainstream. Similar to “pinkwashing,” “metalwashing” is a way for Israel to gain acceptance through reaching out to metal fans. The number of heavy metal bands that have taken a liking to Israel and shut their eyes to Israel’s war crimes, human rights abuses, and violation of international law is growing. Apartheid Israel appears to have strong support from some metal bands. The question is, why? (I’ll leave you to ponder that)
The growing BDS movement continues to ask metal bands to cancel, and the Israeli-led co-resistance movement was prompted to write a letter entitled “A letter to all metal bands,” asking them to refrain from playing in the apartheid state. Sixteen Israelis signed the letter. The only metal band so far to cancel has been August Burns Red. [wpml_mailto email=””]Message me if this needs updating.[/wpml_mailto]
Here’s a partial list of bands whom have screamed, distorted their amps, and wore a lot of black for the stages of Tel Aviv:
Napalm Death, Metallica, Children of Bodom, Arch Enemy, Lamb of God, Linkin Park, and Ozzy Osbourne.
Looking ahead, Guns N’ Roses, Scorpions, Opeth and Dark Tranquility plan to play this year and Lamb of God plans to return.
This photo was published in the Israeli media - every international band breaching the boycott is understood by Israelis as making a political statement in support of Israel and disregard to the REPRESSION of the Palestinians. (photo credit to http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.206743196078219.51406.182828985136307&type=3 )
Metalheads Against Apartheid
A central place to get information on metal bands being asked to cancel Israel is on facebook at “Metalheads Against Apartheid.” The best place to learn about the cultural boycott is at www.pacbi.org
He recalls how Napalm Death had played that night. How, between songs, Barney had stopped and shouted to the crowd: “Now, go and tear down that wall”, or something like that, referring to the separation barrier that cuts off the West Bank from Israel. The crowd were shouting back and had their middle fingers up and suddenly —seeing me still smiling — Feras looks at me deadly serious and says: “This is not funny. They were shouting Death to Arabs.”
Napalm Death walked off stage after that, Feras says, and as they headed on to the next stage on the tour, maybe it left a sour taste, who knows. Chaos of Nazareth, meanwhile, go on. Like over 1.5 million of Israel’s population, the band are Arabs with Israeli citizenship, residents of cities like Nazareth which are primarily Arab but became part of Israel in 1948, as the Jewish army pushed east in the war that followed the declaration of an Israeli state. Arab Israelis now number among twenty per cent of Israel’s population and while life is more tolerable for them than the Palestinians cut off in the West Bank or Gaza, it is far from easy.
“As a Palestinian, as an Arab inside this country, I don’t have all my rights. When I go to airports, I get stopped and I know why. I see the people who are passing through and they are not Arabs,” says Feras. “And when we are standing on the stage, looking around at the crowd, I know that when I turn my back people are talking.”
….
“When some people got to know that we were playing with Lamb of God, they started talking to their manager and saying why don’t you get an Israeli band? Like we are not Israelis,” Feras says, with a good humoured but slightly exhausted laugh. “The manager called me and said: ‘Feras, you have no f***ing idea where you are living.’ He said he had calls from more than twenty managers urging him not to let us play.’
For too long we have tolerated your crimes against humanity and allowed your sins to go unpunished.
Through the use of media deception and political bribery, you have amassed the sympathies of many. You claim to be democratic, yet in reality this is far from the truth, in fact your only goal is to better the lives of a select few while carelessly trampling the liberties of the masses. We see through the propaganda that you circulate through the main stream media and lobby through the political establishment.
Your Zionist bigotry has displaced and killed a great many. As the world weeps, you laugh while planning your next attack. All of this is done under the veil of peace but so long as your regime exists peace shall be hindered.
You label all who refuse to comply with your superstitious demands as antisemetic. And have taken steps to ensure a nuclear holocaust. You are unworthy to exist in your current form and will therefore face the wrath of anonymous. Your empire lacks legitimacy and because of this you must govern behind a curtain of deceit. We will not allow you to attack a sovereign country based upon a campaign of lies. Your grip over humanity will weaken and man will be closer to freedom.
But before this is accomplished the people of this world will rise against you and renounce you in all your worth. Our crusade against your reign of terror shall commence in 3 steps.
Step one will be initiated after the release of this video and will be comprised of systematically removing you from the internet.
Step two will be later disclosed and is already in initiation. And as for step 3, well think of this one as a present from Anonymous to you. We will not stop until the police state becomes a free state.
British Water has decided to cooperate with MATIMOP, an Israeli government agency that has been ordered to enter into international agreements and “aggressively expand opportunities for Israel’s industry”.
Today Al Mezan releases ‘Children in the Gaza Strip’s Access to Medical Care’ a factsheet published under the Save the Children UK funded project ‘Child Rights at the Centre: Enhancing National Capacities to Monitor, Document, and Report on Child Rights Issues in the oPt.’ The factsheet documents Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip which result in children being denied the right to access proper medical care.
The ongoing siege on Gaza which stops essential medical equipment and drugs from entering and causes sporadic fuel and electricity cuts combined with the closure system which prevents medical professionals from travelling abroad to access advanced training outside Gaza. These policies have resulted in a medical system in Gaza which cannot provide care and procedures for many patients. Children requiring care that is unavailable have to go outside Gaza, usually to hospitals in Israel, Jerusalem or the West Bank (as well as to Egypt and Jordan). In order to access these hospitals children require a permit from the Israeli authorities. The process for acquiring a permit is long and complex and often results in denials. Since January 2008, 4 children have died because their application was denied or took too long to be approved.
Israel also denies children’s access to medical care when it prevents ambulances from accessing the Buffer Zone. Ambulances require prior coordination with the Israeli military authorities before they can access the sick or injured in the Buffer Zone. 173 children have died because ambulances have been denied access to reach them (throughout the Gaza Strip, not just in the Buffer Zone).
The policies outlined in this factsheet result in serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law which Israel, as the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip, has an obligation to uphold.
“Children in the Gaza Strip are deprived from receiving quality medical treatment and access to procedures that can save their lives. The right to access medical treatment and to enjoy the highest attainable physical and psychological health is one of the Israeli systematic violations of children’s rights in the Gaza Strip,” Samir Zaqout, Al Mezan’s fieldwork coordinator, states. “This has particularly been the case in the last five years since Israel tightened its siege on the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to the polices outlined in this factsheet which directly affect access to medical care Samir Zaqout says that “the Israeli siege has caused a deterioration in the health of children due to increasing poverty levels and diseases among children such as anemia. Israeli military attacks have also injured thousands of children, hundreds of them sustaining permanent physical disabilities.”
the UN General Assembly has adopted a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) establishing a complaints procedure for violations of children’s rights.
The new treaty will enable children, or their representatives, claiming that their rights have been violated to bring a complaint to an international committee of children’s rights experts if they have not been able to get remedies for these violations in their countries. A coalition of over 80 international and national NGOs, coordinated by the NGO Group for the CRC, which has been actively campaigning for the treaty since 2006, welcomed the news.
‘Israeli children are educated to see the Palestinians as a problem that must be solved and as a threat that must be eliminated. They can go through life, as I did growing up in Jerusalem, without ever meeting a Palestinian child. They know nothing of the life or culture of Palestinians who quite often live only several hundred meters from them.’
The fact she was a MediaCentral employee is what I reported and focused on, mainly because the Jewish Chronicle failed to even mention this basic fact. The problem with Marcus Dysch’s story is that it failed to mention Bakovic works for what is essentially a PR agency that aims to improve Israel’s image in the world.
…
This also calls into question the professionalism of Jewish Chronicle journalist Marcus Dysch. He’s entitled to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint, but that’s no excuse for dishonesty or (at best) poor journalism. The omission of such a salient point means he either didn’t do the five minutes of research it took to find out who Bakovic works for, or that he knew and covered it up.
Today, I asked Dysch on Twitter why he didn’t mention it, but he hasn’t replied (he’s unlikely to have seen this question, however, because he’s preemptively blocked me, despite the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never Tweeted at him before).
If I had written an analogous story about a Palestinian student who was an employee of, say, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, without mentioning who he or she worked for, that would have been sloppy at best and dishonest at worst.
If Bakovic’s campaign against Professor Pratt has “no connection whatsoever” to her employer, as Plosker claims, why not simply say as much in the Jewish Chronicle article? Why did they wait till after Abraham Greenhouse and myself wrote about the case on Electronic Intifada to admit the fact?
Dysch’s reporting has also been called into question after he claimed in a second article that the agency which reviews the performance of universities in the UK “would conduct a preliminary investigation” into Pratt’s behavior. The Quality Assurance Agency soon denied this to the Times Higher Education magazine. They reported that: “no official complaint has yet been made and the QAA will require more details over the allegations before it could proceed with any investigation”.
UPDATE 5th January, 2012 Dysch publishes in the JC a story full of dire innuendo, sinisterly entitled “Performers deny ‘dark art’ funding”.
Dysch insinuates misdoing with the frightening news that ‘At least 34 artists (out of 150) who supported it [the cultural boycott campaign] have received funding to help pay for tours, running costs or fund individual projects’ and refers to Raymond Deane.
Composer Raymond Deane, a founding member of the IPSC, has received around £76,000 from the council during the past five years.
He said: “Neither I, nor the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, receives a penny from the Irish government for our activities in defence of Palestinian rights.”
Well, I hope that clears up Dysch’s confusion.
UPDATE 28th December: Raymond Deane is contacted by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle, Marcus Dysch.
“Mr Deane – I’d like to speak to you about reports in the Israeli media which name you and others involved in the IPSC and claim you are receiving Irish government funding for your pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activities. We are likely to run a story in our newspaper this week which includes Israeli officials suggesting you are knowingly using funds from the Arts Council for these activities. I’d like to speak to you about this and hear your reaction. Please let me know if we can speak in the next 24 hours.
Marcus Dysch
Reporter
Jewish Chronicle
Tel: 020 7415 1665
You can email them back at:
You can also tweet Marcus at @MarcusDysch
@MarcusDysch
Been in office 25 minutes and already had three emails accusing me of being an Israeli government agent. (I’m not, if you were wondering.) #
Ilan Pappe draws attention to the campaign of intimidation conducted by the zionist lobby in his article today in the Electronic Intifada, noting
“What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.”
UPDATE 25th December: Recently, zionists made hacking threats against BDS activists. The Amnesty International UK site was compromised on or before December 16th. According to Paul Royal of Barracuda Labs,
So, if you have visited the website anytime between and has out-dated Java software, there’s a good chance that your computer is infected. In that case, run a complete system scan using your updated anti-virus. It is also a good idea to change the passwords of your online accounts.
…
This exploit will not affect you if you had already installed the latest Java updates or if you don’t have Java installed.
Paul also says:
The working theory for this anomaly relates to Amnesty International as a human rights non-governmental organization. To explain, certain countries use zero day exploits and other techniques to gain electronic information about the activities of human rights activists. Of course, a subset of these activists are too smart to click on links in even well-worded spearphishing emails. But what if you compromised a website frequented by these activists (e.g., Amnesty International)? Then your targets come to you. The context-specific damage potential is significant.
Amnesty International is currently being asked to disassociate itself with Arch Enemy lead singer Angela Gossow’s claim that they will accompany the band in Israel. Amnesty International withdrew its support from a boycott breaking Leonard Cohen concert in 2009.
UPDATE 23rd December: On Ynet, world-renowned Irish composer Raymond Deane is “price-tagged” at the mammoth sum of $119 million (now amended to $119,000) over the past 5 years, which he has, according to the shameless libeller Itamar Eichner, received from the Irish government (are oil companies involved here as well?) to ‘subject to verbal attacks and letters of incitement’ ‘Irish elements interested in sustaining ties with Israel’, and ‘in a bid to free him from the need to work for a living so that he could devote his time and energy to the creation of music.’ For zionist propagandists, music isn’t considered a “real job”, at least if the targeted musician has private activities which include solidarity in campaigns for Palestinian human rights. And here’s the zionist veiled threats against a musician’s livelihood for daring to exercise conscience to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions from apartheid, colonial Israel:
The Foreign Ministry report also reveals that although the Irish foreign minister has voiced his objection to any type of boycott against Israeli culture, Deane is still receiving government funding.
…
“The ongoing funding of a person who has been conducting a hostile, public and aggressive campaign against Israel from Irish taxpayers’ money raises very difficult questions,” says a source in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
The propagandist ends on a softened tone which only serves to highlight the previous attempt at intimidation of an individual of conscience in a foreign country:
“Nonetheless, an artist’s breach of trust toward Ireland’s authorities is an internal Irish matter which we cannot and do not wish to intervene in, despite its harsh implications on us.”
In November, Palestinian Solidarity activists in Ireland protested the holding of an Israeli film event at Filmbase in Dublin which was sponsored and funded by the Israeli Embassy.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) also issued an “Open Letter to Filmbase“, expressing its surprise
“that a prominent Irish cultural institution would allow the Israeli embassy to carry out this audacious ‘Brand Israel’ activity on its premises hardly two weeks after Irish peace activists were illegally apprehended by the Israeli navy in international waters, humiliated, and imprisoned in Israel…”
These approaches were rejected by Filmbase, despite much dissension among its employees, not all of whom supported the decision to host the event. The opening of the festival, a wet and miserable evening, saw Filmbase “defended” by a force of at least two dozen Gardaí. Members of the IPSC, the Irish Anti-War Movement, Act for Palestine and others demonstrated noisily and peacefully, displaying Palestinian flags and placards with such slogans as “End the Siege of Gaza” and “Boycott Israel”. The arrivals of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, and the Minister for Defence and Justice Alan Shatter were greeted with particularly vociferous cries of ”shame! shame!”
These state marketing events are mooted by Israeli propagandists (hasbarists) as effective tools to whitewash Israeli crimes of apartheid, colonialism and Occupation and to counter what they cast as “delegitimization”, although through its ongoing crimes against humanity, Israel accomplishes singlehanded its own delegitimization. Attempting to address “the BDS delegitimization network”, the Reut Institute which develops propaganda strategy for Israel crows that ‘it takes a network to fight a network’. What a tawdry network the hasbarist network is! Some elements supportive of Israel of late have taken to using dirty tricks, as evidenced below from Filmbase to the present, fabricating threats supposedly made by BDS activists against venues and performers that are unsubstantiated, despite repeated challenge.
Now the tactic of falsely accusing BDS people of threats has resurfaced on the facebook wall of Joker, who announced his decision not to play Israel a few days ago, following information about racism the last time he played there. Joker has said several times since he is not going to play Israel, while Israel’s hasbarists have continued to claim that he is not cancelling, on twitter and facebook. The Israeli media has also published a misleading and unsubstantiated story about the cancellation claiming Joker and his girlfriend had received threats on their lives. An email was also circulated from CLUTCH – Electronic, claiming that ‘Joker was very frustrated from the situation and said to tell everyone that the decision was very hard for him and was directly because of death threats and his girlfriend lives.’ They accuse BDS supporters, then admit they made massive efforts to convince Joker to play, including direct conversation with Joker and all those around him – euphemisms for bothering his girlfriend and libellous attacks against people who supported Joker’s decision to cancel.
‘Politically savvy and passionate, Noa Tishby is a Member of AIPAC (The American Israel Public Relations Committee) and has traveled to Washington DC to lobby on Capitol Hill. She is also a member of The Israeli Consulate Speakers Bureau, a member of “Summit Series” organization for young entrepreneurs, a member of the ILC (Israeli Leadership Council) and is a mentor for Women In Film.’
Israel Leadership Council (ILC) of Los Angeles partners with the taskforce – As part of its current strategic re-visioning effort, the ILC invited the taskforce to think about its potential leadership role. In this context, a report was written and presented to ILC board members in Israel. The report includes both a theoretical framework describing the fledgling phenomenon called the organized Israeli Diaspora, as well as guidelines for how the ILC can best fit into this emerging reality. The report aimed to address the following question: How can the ILC leverage the Israeli Diaspora in the US?
Act for Israel concocts lists of spurious ‘talking points’ for Israel’s hasbara borg hubs to proliferate, while spreading malicious interpretations of BDS activists’ tweets, misspelling Palestinian rights advocate Ali Abunimah’s name and labelling him an ‘antisemite’.
Below is the evidence of the malicious Israeli campaign against activists for Palestinian human rights which ironically attests to the effectiveness of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise these reprobate zionists would be otherwise occupied.
UPDATE 22/6/13
WhatIsrael board member Ido Daniel announces his intention to pricetag BDS supporters. WhatIsreal ‘dialogue’ whilst price-tagging would appear to be mutually contradictory, and such is the nature of propaganda.
On twitter, Daniel reiterates, lies and then insults South African anti-apartheidists.
@Jinjirrie because they're like you: ignorant. No one with common sense will accuse Israel in "apartheid". It's only in your head.
