New York-based singer, songwriter and guitarist, Sonia Montez, expressed her support last year for boycott, divestment and sanctions of apartheid Israel.
Her new song “Climbing Fences : The Occupation Song” is written in solidarity with the Palestinian people and all folks living under occupation, including in Ferguson, Missouri.
“As a musician/activist, the worlds in which I live are often separated from each other. We are trained in entertainment to not mix in politics because it may alienate a potential audience.
I abhor this idea and always have. From pop culture icons like Roger Waters to John and Yoko, to the great jazz artists of the 40’s and 50’s, politics has been crucial to the evolution of art and culture. It is in this spirit that I release this free demo, rough, faltered, honest, and filled with all of the emotional rage I and many others have felt over the brutalization of our human brothers and sisters.
Download it, share it, cover it, use it, remix it, tweet it, boast it from every speaker in every city. Make these words of solidarity count, we will not close our eyes, we will not be silent, we will witness and the world will know. Let the message ring loud, FROM #FERGUSON TO #PALESTINE: #OCCUPATION IS A CRIME!”
Lyrics:
Climbing Fences : The Occupation Song
Dead night
Fire in the sky
Stars are running shy
Ground bleeds in streams for you
Early little love child
Bore the burden of the hate squad
Someone watched as innocence left your eye
Climbing fences that tear you apart
How golden is our silence now?
When they come in the middle of dead night
When there’s nothing but fire in the darkened sky
Stars run shy from the bullet fight
How the ground bleeds in streams of pain for you
“Listen pretty sister
I got boys with toys to paint you red
I got silence now”
When they come in the middle of dead night
When there’s nothing but fire in the darkened sky
Stars run shy from the bullet fight
How the ground bleeds in streams of pain for you
You bleed as the world closes blinds
You scream as the pressure holds you tight
In this cage, you can’t breathe
When all you need to be is free
When they come in the middle of dead night
When there’s nothing but fire in the darkened sky
Stars run shy from the bullet fight
How the ground bleeds in streams of pain for you
Further to the previous written report of the protest held outside the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the video above captures the testimonies of people from British Jews Against Genocide who participated.
Here’s selections from some of the powerful speeches at the event:
Selma James: “I have to remind people of the stories that Jews told when they came to England to ask for English help because they were being taken to the death camps. And the Foreign Office said that the Jews were hysterical, that it wasn’t really true, that it wasn’t really happening, and when they finally convinced Churchill to bomb the tracks to Auschwitz, the Foreign Office refused to do it and I am reminded of that because today what’s happening to Palestinians is being dismissed by the media, is being demeaned by the media. It’s the same history repeating itself because the people who are being slaughtered are not being listened to, are not being taken seriously.“
Yael Kahn: “Intentionally Israel sees the women and the mothers and children as their main targets. Israel’s fight is not against Hamas, Israel is fighting against the people of Gaza.“
Barnaby Raine: “We’re here to present the other tradition in Jewish history, the tradition of solidarity of standing with the oppressed. Not just standing with Jews but standing with whoever they are when they are oppressed. So that’s why we stand with the Palestinian people and we as Jews and human beings support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel.“
My email to the Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Phyllis Wise, objecting to the firing of Professor Steven Salaita and demanding his reinstatement is below. You can send one too.
I am shocked and dismayed that you would end the employment of the honourable Associate Professor of American Indian Studies, Steven Salaita, due to pressure from those who place the indefensible – the genocidal actions of settler colonial Israel toward Palestinians whom it occupies, oppresses and sieges in Gaza – before academic freedom and ethical educative values.
Would you have treated Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King similarly for their strenuous public advocacy for attainment of rights for the rightsless because racists objected to their appointments? It is not uncivil nor bigoted to challenge racism.
Should academics be gagged from expressing political analyses and opinions in public so that the tender sensibilities of racists, white supremacists and nationalists are not offended? Surely one of the roles of education is to civilise people through learning to shed their prejudices and ignorance. Further, no state or political ideology should be quarantined from critique. To punish people for critiquing the Israeli regime or any other state undermines the foundations of democracy.
What message are you sending to other academics who oppose injustice and oppression? Why side with and encourage today’s McCarthyite bullies and their witchhunt of dissenters?
Please act judiciously in the spirit of civilised values, academic freedom and democracy – restore your reputation by re-employing Steven Salaita.
Dear Indhu Rubasingham, Protest outside the Tricycle Theatre November 2013
We write to thank you for refusing to accept Israeli sponsorship of the Jewish Film Festival.
We particularly appreciate that you distinguish between Jews in Britain and the Israeli State. We could not be further apart from the Israeli state. The insistence of the organisers of the UK Jewish Film Festival on including sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy, even when you generously offered an alternative, has made their priorities clear: not Jewish people or Jewish film but the hijacking of Jewish culture to disguise Israeli policies and particularly its bloodied image. Its murder and maiming of Palestinians and others in the Middle East has been going on for many decades. But its recent unrestrained, sadistic attack on Gaza has reinforced its genocidal intentions against the Palestinians.
We are particularly appalled as Jews that our suffering as a people is the occasion and the excuse for the genocide of others. We are aware of the suffering of others, which is why we have said, unlike Zionists: Never again – for anyone. Including of course Tamils in Sri Lanka, about which you would be familiar.
Those of us who were part of the demonstration in front of the Tricycle last November against Israeli sponsorship of the JFF, which was led by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, welcome this decision of the Tricycle to respect the multi-racial nature of the community of which it is part, by refusing blood money from apartheid Israel.
We are a group of Jews in Britain including from Israel and are appalled that you have been subjected to false accusations of anti-Semitism. Zionism cynically uses the sufferings of Jews to silence critics of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. This is an abhorrent attempt to intimidate a local theatre for refusing to be enlisted to serve the Israeli State, in order to camouflage its most recent assault on hospitals, UN schools in which thousands were sheltering, children, and civilians of all ages.
We take this opportunity to share with you a few examples of how Israel harnesses culture as a propaganda tool.
1) Israeli artists who receive government sponsorship are contractually obligated to promote the state as a condition of their sponsorship, which includes Israeli films that are promoted as being critical; but while they might show some criticism their overall message is to present Israel as a democracy and camouflage its apartheid.
If they receive funding by the state, Israeli artists who play internationally are expected to be political ambassadors and must sign contracts which declare their cooperation with state marketing aims. The standard Israeli sponsorship contract states:
“The service provider (i.e. artists) undertakes to act faithfully, responsibly and tirelessly to provide the Ministry with the highest professional services. The service provider is aware that the purpose of ordering services from him is to promote the policy interests of the State of Israel via culture and art, including contributing to creating a positive image for Israel.”
3) In 2008 the Israeli Foreign Office identified London as one of the hubs it targeted for “Brand Israel”. It stated:
“The Jewish community has to be part of it for it to succeed. It’s very important for us to convey the message to them that a better image for Israel and a better performance of that image is part and parcel with Israel’s national security.” “But it’s mainly it’s an attempt to change the mindset of people when it comes to Israel” “”That doesn’t mean conducting an advertising campaign, but the execution of a program that will support the brand identity… it could include organizing film festivals” “… the hope-for result is a change in peoples’ perception of Israel.”
In short, any event accepting sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy or from any other Israeli state bodies is legitimising the Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and its genocidal attacks on the Palestinians, including the Gaza Strip that Israel turned into a concentration camp.
We value the Tricycle and as your loyal supporters, your audience, we ask that you will not renew your association with Israel, as long as it violates international law, and until the 3 conditions set out in the Palestinian call for boycott demanding Israel meets its obligation and comply with international law (see http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1801).
The Board of Deputies of British Jews is condoning genocide in Gaza. They don’t represent us. British Jews Against Genocide Protest (Copyright)
Today, 4 August 2014, outside of the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, on the 27th day of Israel’s military attack on the Gazan people, Jews in Britain Against Genocide staged a die-in to commemorate the hundreds of Palestinian children deliberately targeted and killed by Israel. We displayed toys, clothes and replicas of mutilated children and babies smeared red to symbolise the blood of Palestinian children murdered by Israeli forces.
We are Jews in Britain outraged at the Board of Deputies’ uncritical support for Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The Board of Deputies claims to speak in our name when it lobbies in defence of Israeli violence. It organises with the Zionist Federation rallies in support of Israel’s slaughter. It demands that John Prescott be punished for comparing Gaza to a concentration camp (Daily Mirror, 26 July 2014). It attempts to intimidate local councils for flying the Palestinian flag as an expression of solidarity with Gaza, and has written to the prime minister thanking him for his support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza. It cynically uses the Nazi genocide of Jews to silence critics of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
We Jews know, from our history, about persecution, concentration camps, starvation and murder. Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a concentration camp by imposing a seven-year military siege, by restricting access to food, water, fuel and medical supplies, by imprisoning 1.8 million people and squeezing them even further by imposing no-go areas within the Gaza Strip.
In the current assault on Gaza, entire families are killed and neighbourhoods obliterated. UNICEF has condemned Israel for deliberately targeting women and children. Nearly 400 children have been murdered in less than four weeks, and more than 2000 have been injured and maimed. Gaza’s dead children are dead simply because they are Palestinians – this is genocide.
At least a quarter of a million Gazans are homeless because of Israeli bombing. There is nowhere safe to escape to — Israel has bombed UN-protected schools, hospitals and other UN buildings, killing civilians seeking refuge. Ten thousand people have been killed or injured. The bombardment of Gaza from the sea, land and air increasingly turns Gaza from a concentration camp into a death camp.
We support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and in particular we demand that the British government end its complicity in genocide by first of all ending its arms trade with Israel.
The Board of Deputies claims it wants Israel to be treated fairly and impartially within British society, but in fact it demands exceptionalism. It wants Israel to be exempted from any sanctions in spite of its apartheid and now its genocidal campaign against Gaza.
We accuse the Board of Deputies of condoning the atrocities the State of Israel commits in Gaza by attempting to silence Israel’s critics. This massive blood stain will not go away.
We accuse the Board of Deputies of joining with the anti-Semites in equating Zionism with Judaism and telling the world that all British Jews support Israel. That is a lie.
Jews in Britain Against Genocide
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NOTES
Genocide is defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as any act committed with the intention of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. http://www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus/treaties/genocide.asp
Concentration camp is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution’
Climbing Fences : The Occupation Song
