Artists Against Apartheid and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel would like to extend our thanks to Carlos Santana for honoring the call for the Cultural Boycott of Israel, by electing not to perform in the apartheid state. The call for cultural boycott was successful in creating international accountability for human rights violations in apartheid South Africa, and is now being applied in the case of Israel.
The Israeli state has repeatedly evidenced that it relies on artistic propaganda to improve its “international brand” as a pluralistic democracy, all the while continuing state sponsored ethnic cleansing. Performing in Israel, as if it were just another stop on the tour, normalizes the apartheid practiced by the Israeli government, and disregards Palestinian led campaigns to organize international solidarity against it (www.bdsmovement.net).
All artists are requested to boycott Israel as a tour destination, except when performing in solidarity with the popular struggle against occupation, dispossession and apartheid.
Cultural figures like Roger Waters, Arundhati Roy, Brian Eno, John Berger, and Ken Loach have expanded their advocacy to publicly hold Israel accountable for its human rights violations and war crimes. We hope that Santana, as an advocate of human rights, will join Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others engaged in the nonviolent struggle for equal rights and justice for the Palestinian people in endorsing the cultural boycott of Israel.
Update: Abdallah Abu Rahmah has written a letter from prison:
“To all our friends,
I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope. I know that Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our nonviolent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down. What Israel’s leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment…” [read at Electronic Intifada...]
WED. FEB. 10: “Poetry of Palestine”–a monthly literary performance. This month featuring Remi Kanazi, Tala Abu Rahmeh and Boikutt. Introducing for the first time Laila Shikaki with interludes by Tashweesh. Starts at 7 sharp. Cafe La Vie in Ramallah (between the Dwarsay3 and Orthodoxy Club), Palestine.
The show marks another event held in Sheikh Jarrah to gain support for and raise awareness of the tragedies wrought on the Palestinian families in the neighbourhood. The weekly Friday march from Zion Square in West Jerusalem to Sheikh Jarrah have been gathering momentum, with the demonstrators numbering in their hundreds. Dozens of Israeli and international activists have been arrested for their participation in the demonstrations and ongoing activist presence in Sheikh Jarrah, including American citizen Ryan Olander who has been held in Ramle prison since his arrest on the 18th of December and threatened with deportation.
Background
Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.
The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.
Mass Obliteration is an Italian death metal band, born in Rome during april 2006 from the cousins Andrea and Luca, who moved from their hometown Gaeta (where the Cavalera brothers from Sepultura have their origin too) to the capital, deluded by their past projects, aiming to create extreme and original music. They created this song “Mashom” and video, which is dedicated to Anarchists Against The Wall and “all the ones who fight against the apartheid in Palestine”:
They build walls, they steal the land
The world ignores, fuckin deaf and blind
The world ignores the tragedy of the exiles
Since Six days war Israel denies
No passage to Ramallah… The invader now forbids
They’re all ghurba*. No way for the refugees
Solo: G. Constantino
They build walls, they steal the land
The world ignores, fuckin deaf and blind
“I hate the frontiers, I hate the borders
Borders of the body, of the writing, of the behaviors,
Of the states…”**
People lead to famine, convicted in a cage
Sheltered by U.S..A, the executioners take no blame
They build walls, they steal the land
The world ignores, fuckin’ deaf and blind
Uri Gopher presents his personal perspective on how it feels to raise a child in Israel, as a Jewish-Israeli who does not buy into his country’s Ethos and who wants no part in the continued self-defeating denial of responsibility to the tragic fate of the Palestinian people. Inspired by the work of “Zochrot” activists.
Artists Against Apartheid is an International Alliance committed to Equal Rights and Justice, and the elimination of Apartheid in our world. If you are interested in getting involved in our campaign to help end apartheid in Palestine-Israel, please contact us.
Artists Against Apartheid and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel would like to extend our thanks to Carlos Santana for honoring the call for the Cultural Boycott of Israel, by electing not to perform in the apartheid state. The call for cultural boycott was successful in creating international accountability for human rights violations in apartheid South Africa, and is now being applied in the case of Israel.
