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Open letter to the Rolling Stones regarding planned gig in Israel

brian | 20.05.2007 05:18



Please circulate and forward widely

The following letter is addressed to the Rolling Stones who are planning a concert in Israel. At this point we are soliciting endorsements from artists, cultural figures, intellectuals and cultural organizations, and others who wish to lend their support.



Open letter to the Rolling Stones regarding planned gig in Israel
Sabbah's blog



May 19, 2007

Please circulate and forward widely

The following letter is addressed to the Rolling Stones who are planning a concert in Israel. At this point we are soliciting endorsements from artists, cultural figures, intellectuals and cultural organizations, and others who wish to lend their support.

Please send endorsements to  info@boycottisrael.ps , with your name/name of organization, city and country.

Boycott Israel - Don’t Play another "Sun City"!
An open letter to the Rolling Stones regarding their planned gig in Israel

18 May 2007

Dear Rolling Stones,

The Palestinian arts community received in disbelief media reports of your upcoming performance in Israel, at a time when Israel continues unabated with its colonial and apartheid designs to further dispossess, oppress, and ultimately ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland. If the news is accurate, we strongly urge you to cancel your plans to perform in Israel until the time comes when it ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and respects fundamental human rights as well as the relevant precepts of international law concerning Palestinian rights to freedom, self-determination and equality.

Performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era. We all remember how leading Rolling Stones musicians played a prominent role in enforcing a cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1980’s, and participated in recording the timeless song, Sun City, which had a singular influence on raising public awareness about apartheid and its injustices. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Prof. John Dugard, and South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils have repeatedly declared, Israel has created a worse system of apartheid than anything that ever existed in South Africa.

Indeed, Israel’s policies throughout its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, which have surpassed their South African counterparts, include house demolitions; Jews-only colonies and roads; uprooting hundreds of thousands of trees; indiscriminate killings of civilians, particularly children; incessant theft of land and water resources; denying freedom of movement to millions under occupation, cutting up the occupied Palestinian territory into Bantustans, some entirely caged by walls, fences and hundreds of roadblocks. Sixty years since the Nakba, Israel’s planned campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, and 40 years into its military occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territory, Israel has consistently and relentlessly violated basic human rights and relevant precepts of international law with utter impunity. Moreover, Israel’s war of aggression against Lebanon last year caused more than one thousand civilian deaths, not to mention massive destruction to infrastructure and decimation of entire residential neighbourhoods.

The resounding failure of the international community to date in ending Israel’s occupation, collective punishment, and other forms of oppression was what prompted Palestinians to appeal to international civil society to bear its moral responsibility to put an end to injustice, just as it did against apartheid South Africa. To this end, Palestinian civil society has almost unanimously called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it fully complies with international law and recognizes the fundamental human rights of the people of Palestine. A specific call for cultural boycott of Israel was issued last year, garnering wide support. Among the many groups and institutions that have heeded the Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel are the Church of England; the US Presbyterian Church; a group of top British architects; the British National Union of Journalists in the UK; the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario; Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger; and Palme d’Or winner director Ken Loach. Is it too much, then, to expect conscientious artists like the Rolling Stones to similarly uphold the values of freedom, equality and justice for all by supporting the growing boycott against Israel?

We appeal to your moral principles and your record of standing up for human rights and human dignity. We sincerely hope that you shall cancel this ill-conceived and particularly harmful concert in Israel.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned:

————————————————————————

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
www.pacbi.org
 info@boycottisrael.ps

 http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m32993&hd=&size=1&l=e

brian

Comments

Hide the following 10 comments

The Opening Number

20.05.2007 11:28

If the Stones do play Israel - like they need the money - they should open the concert with "Sympathy for the Devil."

Nanker Phelge


in the memory of john lennon

20.05.2007 12:09

Stones! The heart of John Lennon is ineasy at the day when you will arrive to Israel to entertain the well-fed by the US dollars Jewish children, while hungry children of Palestain are dying under Israel's bombs.
Remember! John Lennon REFUSED the prize at the time of the Vietnem War!
Stay moral ! Let us write your names in the history books on the same page where John Lennon is!

lara
mail e-mail: laracrete@verizon.net


Understand the game

20.05.2007 15:36

In order to contest a "game" you need to understand the situation. If you imagine that this is just like the boycott against South Afrika then you simply don't understand.

a) In the previous situation (South Afrika) there was not a large Boer population spread around the world wo felt very strongly and would take countermeasures and that for them, THIS issue would be more important than any other.

b) You need to make it very clear that you intend to maintain your boycott indefinitely into the future. That you will NOT get distracted by other issues next year, five years from now, or ten years from now. Because the Jews won't forget. They don't have "other issues" that collectively mean that much to them.

Now did you understand that? To bring financial pressure to bear (say against the Rolling Stones) you need to convince them that YOU can do more economic damage to them than the Jews can. You need to understand that your "opponents" in the game will "punish" those who join your boycott if they can. You can, for example, if the Stones go ahead with this concert, refrain from buying their CDs, attending their concerts in Britain, etc. You can be effective with this threat IF you can be convincing that not only do you care about this issue now but will still care 6 months from now, etc.

If you have other fish to fry you are at great disadvantage in this game. This is NOT unjust/unfair, simply the consequence of your caring being spread over too many issues to be as effective as the caring of a smaller numebr of people whose caring is more concentrated.

Mike Novack
mail e-mail: stepbystpefarm ,a> mtdata.com


Remove Antisemitism from indymedi

20.05.2007 15:56

Post is antisemetic, please remove.

DOV


just like Roger Waters

20.05.2007 16:21

I think this is the same group that tried to get Roger Waters to cancel his Israel concert last year.

I expect them to be just as successful -- which is to say, I expect them to be unsuccessful.

Go ahead, though. Don't let me stop you. Knock yourself out. Waste all the energy you'd like.

gehrig


Down with Anti-semitism

20.05.2007 17:48

"Post is antisemetic, please remove."

Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

you're a twat dude. Anit-Israeli is not anti-semitic you twat.

Israel is one of the worst tyrant nations in the world. Go check the records at the UN buddy. See the human rights abuses and war crimes that have been proven. If not for the US Israel leadership would be in jail - it's a fact.

Down with hypocrites


Mike Novack's "Wisdom"

20.05.2007 20:28

"To bring financial pressure to bear (say against the Rolling Stones) you need to convince them that YOU can do more economic damage to them than the Jews can." - Mike Novack

You must be joking. Conservative estimates put Mick Jagger's net worth at $250 million, Keith Richards at $220 million, Charlie Watts at $96 million and Ron Woods at $82 million. And, from where is this "economic damage" coming? The Stones perform for the vanity of it all, not the money. So, how do you damage their egos?

Nanker Phelge


Sorry if misunderstood

20.05.2007 21:44

I was making a GENERAL comment (about boycott strategy) trying to point out that THIS situation is not the same as when back then we organized the South Afrika boycott. Trying to organize in the SAME way would likely not work as expected because in the case of the proposed Israel boycott you DO have to consider "local" political and economic ramifications.

It matters not at all that many Jews are critical of aspects of Israel because if you succeed in total polarization 99% of the Jews, forced to choose, will choose tribal solidarity. In effect I am questioning the wisdom of working for total polaization UNLESS you are willing to accept and pay the "political" price. I am questioning LONG TERM commitment and the willingness to give up other issues for the sake of this one --- because I think that's what it would take.

Mike Novack
mail e-mail: stepbystpefarm mtdata.com


Mike

21.05.2007 21:17

You do tend to write abrasive posts, probably because you use one word where ten would do. Expand. And you SHOUT all the time - please find some other way to emphasise words that doesn't seem as aggressive. You also speak a lot of sense - for instance, in general you are right about the prospects of boycotting Israel, although only by shunning the Rolling Stones socially will this work in this case.

If you really helped boycott SA, and are really concerned with Palestinine, then all respect to you. I'm not writing his to criticise or patronise you, just to strengthen you.

all good things,

Danny


yeah yeah

22.05.2007 09:00

"99% of the Jews, forced to choose, will choose tribal solidarity"

that says it all

the jewish religion is fractured and in general, set against zionism

there is no homogenous genetic/ethnic strain of 'jewishness'

AND the jewish people ARE NOT A TRIBE, they are a disperate, widely distributed group - clinging to a debased notion of religion and belonging.

Zionism is a political mvement and as such relies on a fanatical hatred of that which it percieves as 'other'. It does not represent jewishness, but instead represents a peculiar form of jewishness that sees itself as above the world and all in it - in other words it a post facto rationalisation of the innate hatred and xenophobia that all humans fall back on when they are confused, bruised or just plain nasty.

jabba the zionist