Dear Red Hot Chili Peppers
As you may be aware, Palestinians seeking freedom, justice and equality are engaged in non-violent resistance to over 64 years of Israel’s apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism. A broad coalition of Palestinian civil society groups are leading the global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel, joined by Israeli and international activists.
We as artists can act in coordination with this global movement by understanding the call for cultural boycott. To challenge Israel’s robotic use of the arts to smokescreen its human rights violations, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) asks artists everywhere to help deprogram it. Specifically, the campaign asks that:
- International artists boycott Israel as a regular tour destination.
- All artists refrain from participation in events sponsored by the state of Israel.
- All artists refrain from participation in events which deceptively suggest symmetry between “both sides” of Israeli apartheid.
As was done in the case of South African apartheid, please join us now in the cultural boycott of Israel, and help stop entertaining apartheid. For more information about the cultural boycott as it relates to artists, please visit: http://declaration.artistsagainstapartheid.org
Signed,
Artists Against Apartheid
The Red Hot Chili Peppers performed in the 2011 Hoping Foundation variety show in London, an event which raised over £392,000 for the group’s activities for Palestinian refugee children. A petition urging that the Red Hot Chili Peppers cancel their upcoming performance, slated for September 10th 2012, has over 2300 signatures: http://t.co/ufiQUZUO
Mary Tuma – Homes For The Disembodied
Homes For the Disembodied - Artist Mary Tuma
Artist’s Statement:
Homes for the Disembodied is a large-scale suspended sculpture made from 50 continuous yards of black chiffon folded to create five connected dresses similar in form to the dresses traditionally worn by the women of Palestine. It was created for exhibition at the Al Wasiti Art Center in East Jerusalem in the year 2000. Homes for the Disembodied is both a memorial to and an offering for the people displaced from Jerusalem who were unable to return to their homes before their deaths. That the dresses are actually one piece is significant and speaks to the link that binds the Palestinian people through a shared misfortune. The dresses are lined up facing a single direction, as if waiting in line or moving together. The heroic scale reflects the strength and courage of Palestinian women who must carry on in unjust circumstances they have little power to change.
“To be more specific about the piece’s relationship to what is happening today, and to the apartheid issue in particular: Palestinians are still restricted from travel to Jerusalem, even if that was their home until 1967. Currently even more travel restrictions apply, so that there are Israeli checkpoints between Arab villages within the occupied territories as well as checkpoints between the occupied areas and Israel. These checkpoints are meant to create impossible situations for the Palestinians, to disempower them and to control every breath they take. The reasoning behind such control is, of course, Israeli security, however the presence of the many checkpoints within the territories attests to the false nature of this explanation. The piece is meant to point out the lack of access to the city of Jerusalem, the so-called open city.” - Mary Tuma
Never Before Campaign video for Israel Apartheid Week
Creative Community for Peace and Apartheid
Boycott The Creative Community for Peace
Artists Against Apartheid calls on allies to boycott the Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), which is in fact a complicit propaganda institution seeking to normalize Israeli apartheid and strongarm entertainers into its service. Fearing encroaching pressure from the Palestinian led global BDS movement, CCFP has mobilized to counteract the cultural boycott of Israel, making itself a target of the human rights campaign in the process.
Capitalizing on ignorance, the CCFP proudly calls Israel “the only democracy in the region“ surrounded by states known for their human rights violations, while offering no solutions to any human rights violations anywhere in the Middle East. Of course CCFP does not acknowledge the human rights violations being carried out daily by the Israeli state throughout Palestine-Israel.
One of CCFP’s founders, Steve Schnur, wants artists to know “what Israel is really about – the freedom, the democracy and equal rights”, but CCFP does not acknowledge that more than 30 laws racially discriminate against Palestinians and anyone the state does not deem to be “Jewish”.
CCFP wishes to make the claim that “art transcends politics” but is engaged heavily in political propaganda on behalf of an apartheid state. The only artist known to be included in CCFP’s advisory board is Idan Raichel, a self-proclaimed cultural ambassador who stated: “We certainly see ourselves as ambassadors of Israel in the world, cultural ambassadors, hasbara ambassadors, also in regards to the political conflict.”
CCFP uses its hierarchical influence within the entertainment industry to prevent artists from arriving at the logical conclusion: that a state which privileges certain citizens based on racial and religious identity is an apartheid state. CCFP advisor David Renzer boasts about their steering of Macy Gray’s decision “One of our main messages to her was: ‘Look, Macy, you’re not a politician; you’re an artist. One of the beautiful things about an artist is that when she performs, she spreads the message of love, peace and understanding and an open dialogue. That won’t happen if you cancel.” Mr. Renzer does not contextualize that Palestinian artists living under Israeli military rule cannot so easily spread a message of peace even a few miles without encountering an IDF tank, nor would they have been able to attend Macy Gray’s concert. Palestinians seeking equal rights and justice are calling for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, not imported entertainment.
CCFP, which seeks to normalize Israel’s “cultural achievements” while ignoring its ongoing colonial practices and innate structural racism, is a prime candidate for cultural boycott. As indicated in guidelines from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, “rebranding” efforts aimed at diluting, justifying, whitewashing or otherwise diverting attention from the Israeli occupation and other violations of Palestinian rights and international law deserve to be boycotted for their complicity in serving the purposes of Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime.
The cultural boycott of Israel, as a key component of the global BDS Movement, shall be maintained until Israel meets its moral and legal obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
Ana Hurra on Tour in USA
Ana Hurra (I am free) is a play that depicts one of the interrogation sessions in Israeli jails. The play, written and directed by Palestinian artist Valantina Abu Oqsa, is based on testimonies and stories by political female prisoners who stood heroically in defiance against their interrogators. Abu Oqsa creates a theatre experience that is derived from the Palestinian reality through studies and in-depth research that lasted almost one year and culminated in interviews with several former Palestinian male and female political prisoners, documenting the experiences to the tiniest detail, delving into the unknown and revealing facts, constituting a precedent in the Palestinian theater and for the Palestinian prisoners in general.
Originally from the North of Palestine, Ma’lia village in the upper Galilee. Valantina Saleem Tamam Abu Oqsa was born in 1967. She currently lives in Haifa with her Jerusalemite husband and their two sons Nashed and Yaman. She is one of the co-founders of the Palestinian Theatre League.
Classified as a self starter who is exceptional in her work. She continuously rises in her magnificent performances on stage, leaving her audience mesmerized and always wanting more.
US TOUR: OCTOBER 7-23, 2011
A PROJECT OF THE US PALESTINIAN COMMUNITY NETWORK
TOUR SCHEDULE + SUPPORT THE TOUR
October 7, 8 and 9 shows: Tickets now on sale for San Bruno and Berkeley!
October 14 show: Tickets now on sale in New York City!
October 21 show: New details on Detroit, Michigan show!
Remi Kanazi: This Poem Will Not End Apartheid
Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and activist based in New York City. He is the editor of Poets For Palestine (Al Jisser Group, 2008). His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including Al Jazeera English, GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and BBC Radio. His poetry has taken him across North America, the UK, and the Middle East, and he recently appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well as Poetry International. He is a recurring writer in residence and advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop.
Remi Kanazi is an Artist Against Apartheid.
Roger Waters Announces BDS Support
From the statement ‘My Journey to BDS’ by Roger Waters, March 7th 2011:
In 1980, a song I wrote, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by Black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so-to-speak, on certain songs, including mine.
Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest Israel’s apartheid wall. They sang “We don’t need no occupation! We don’t need no racist wall!” At the time, I hadn’t seen first-hand what they were singing about.
A year later in 2006, I contracted to perform in Tel Aviv.
Palestinians from the movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go. The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory, to see the Wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.
Under the protection of the UN I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The Wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world with disdainful aggression. If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that Wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met, people whose lives are crushed daily in a multitude of ways by Israel’s occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: “We don’t need no thought control.”
Realizing at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimize the oppression I was witnessing, I canceled my gig at the football stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to cooperation between people of different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew live and work side by side in harmony.
Against all expectations, it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for me and my band, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbors and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.
Sadly in the intervening years, the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant civil rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and The Wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of The West Bank.
I had learned that day in Bethlehem in 2006 something of what it means to live under occupation, imprisoned behind a Wall. It means that a Palestinian farmer must watch olive groves centuries old, uprooted. It means that a Palestinian student cannot get to school because the checkpoint is closed. It means a woman may give birth in a car, because the soldier won’t let her pass to the hospital that’s a ten minute drive away. It means a Palestinian artist cannot travel abroad to exhibit work, or to show a film in an international film festival.
For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel’s illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed travel.
In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.
Where governments refuse to act, people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For some that meant joining the Gaza Freedom March, for others it meant joining the humanitarian flotilla that tried to bring much needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.
….read more at IMEU.net]
Roger Waters performs “We Shall Overcome” with G.E. Smith and Thor Jonsson
Video: Miguel Nogueira
Honoring the work of Juliano Mer Khamis
63 Years of Occupation
From Youtube: “To reply to the Gaza youth Manifesto, and with no additional words to the ones spoken with true heart on this video, we give you, The Manifesto. A simple, true, self-explanatory, expression of what we’re sick of.
As these days mark the 63rd memory of the Nakba, our people all around the world, revolt, and object to the injustice and hatred we are met with on a day to day basis, just because we’re Palestinians and just because we exist.
I urge your humanity and your conscience, to spread on this video, so the 15th of May 1948, wouldn’t ever be forgot, and so Palestinians would once more have their freedom and rights back; especially the right of return.
Salamat,
Two randoms from Palestine.”
Dear Artist: MF Doom
MF Doom: Please heed the call from our Palestinian colleages to boycott Israeli cultural institutions and cancel your upcoming performance. Many hip-hop artists have been outspoken regarding the struggle for Palestinian human rights. We hope you can strengthen alliances with these and others in the growing international movement against Israeli apartheid.
“You’re performing 30 minutes from where I live but I can’t come to your show simply because I’m Palestinian. I live in a prison called the West Bank and I’m a big supporter of your music. Don’t play for the oppressor, don’t play for colonialism, don’t play Apartheid ‘Israel’… Stand on the right side of history and respect the Palestinian call for boycott.” – Boikutt, Musician and MC based in Ramallah, Palestine; co-founder and member of Tashweesh, co-founder and former member of Ramallah, Underground, and member of Artists Against Apartheid
Dear Artist:
As you may be aware, Palestinians seeking freedom, justice and equality are engaged in non-violent resistance to 63 years of Israel’s apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism. A broad coalition of Palestinian civil society groups are leading the global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel, joined by Israeli and international activists.
We as artists can act in coordination with this global movement by understanding the call for cultural boycott. To challenge Israel’s robotic use of the arts to smokescreen its human rights violations, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) asks artists everywhere to help deprogram it. Specifically, the campaign asks that:
- International artists boycott Israel as a regular tour destination.
- All artists refrain from participation in events sponsored by the state of Israel.
- All artists refrain from participation in events which deceptively suggest symmetry between “both sides” of Israeli apartheid.
Please join us in the cultural boycott of Israel, and help us Stop Entertaining Apartheid. For more information about the cultural boycott as it relates to artists, please visit: http://declaration.artistsagainstapartheid.org
Signed,
Artists Against Apartheid
Stand in Solidarity with Freedom Theatre and Against Israeli Apartheid
UPDATE from Friends of Freedom Theatre: “We are relieved to report to you that as of this moment, all persons associated with The Freedom Theatre in Jenin have now been freed from detention. As you may remember, two middle-of-the night raids by the Israeli military on the Theatre in July and August damaged it and the home of one of the staff, terrorized family members and neighbors and resulted in four arrests.
Despite spending up to a month in jail, none of the four arrested men was charged with anything remotely resembling a serious crime of any sort…”
Artists Against Apartheid and we the undersigned stand in solidarity with our colleagues at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, who face both extreme repression by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), and cultural friction to their avant-garde productions, in the process of presenting their art. Members of the Theatre have been recently abducted during IOF raids, and are being held in Jalame prison, located inside of Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
The Freedom Theatre – a theatre and cultural center in Jenin Refugee Camp – is developing the only professional venue for theatre and multimedia in the north of the West Bank in Occupied Palestine. Since it opened its doors in 2006, the organization has continued to grow, develop and expand, enabling the young generation in the area to develop new and important skills which will allow them to build a better future for themselves and for their society. Despite IOF raids and the recent assassination of one of its founders, Juliano Mer Khamis, the Freedom Theatre persists in staging works.
On July 27 2011, the Israeli Special Forces launched a raid on the Freedom Theatre. According to reports, an estimated fifty Israeli soldiers or more surrounded Jenin refugee camp in the middle of night. Soldiers came masked and heavily armed. Heavy blocks of stone were hurled at the entrance, causing damage. Witnesses at the scene were physically intimidated by soldiers; one night guard/technician student recounted being forcibly told to drop his pants, and his brother being handcuffed.
Two Palestinians involved with the theatre, Bilal Al-Saadi, Chairperson of the board for Freedom Theatre, along with the head technician, Adnan Naghnaghiye, were arrested by Israeli soldiers and taken away. No warrant or explanations were given for their arrests.
On August 6, 2011, a third Palestinian, Rami Awni Hwayel, a third year graduating acting student, was arrested by the IOF at Shave Shomeron checkpoint, immediately handcuffed, blindfolded and taken away in an army jeep. He was on his way to Jenin from Ramallah to rehearse for an upcoming production of Waiting for Godot, directed by an Israeli American theatre artist.
As of today, Bilal, Adnan, and Rami are reported to be held in Jalame prison, inside of Israel; there is still no explanation for their arrests. The IOF have refused to comment on the raid, even going so far as to deny the raid took place. A gag order has been placed on the reporting of Ramis’ arrest in the Israeli press.
While we condemn this violence against a Palestinian cultural institution, we will not sit idly awaiting justice. We call on others to join us in the Cultural Boycott of Israel, and as in the case of South African apartheid, to apply international pressure to bring about a situation of freedom and equality. We will boycott all events sponsored by the State of Israel, and reject partnership with any Israeli theatre companies which do not take a clear and proactive stance against the colonial oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel, and its system of apartheid.
We stand with members of the Freedom Theatre, supporting their universal human rights and freedom of expression to produce any works they see fit to present in Jenin.
We call upon Israel’s apartheid government to explain its actions of the raid on Freedom Theatre and to release Adnan Naghnaghiye, Bilal Al-Saadi and Rami Awni Hwayel from Israeli custody.
Sincerely,
Artists Against Apartheid
Theatre of the Oppressed Laboratory
SALAAM Theatre
The New Theatre (Ireland)
Ariel Burke, Actor (Raleigh, NC)
John P. Falcone, Ph.D Student (Theology & Education) at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry
Reg Flowers, Falconworks Artists Group
Roger Michell – Theatre and Film Director (UK)
Sam West – Actor and Director(UK)
Ronan Wilmot (Ireland)
Sabina England, Theatre Artist, Playwright
George Eugeniou (of Theatro Technis, Camden Town)
Naomi Foyle, Poet, Librettist, and Co-ordinator of British Writers in Support of Palestine
Michal Leman-Lemansk, freelance theatre producer (Ireland)
Roger Michell – Theatre and Film Director
Jimmy Murphy, Playwright (Ireland)
Sam West – Actor and Director
Punks Against Apartheid
Adalah-NY, The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Sabina England Appeals to Jello Biafra
Update: Jello Biafra canceled.
AAA Member Sabina England presents her appeal to Jello Biafra, as his band has booked a show in apartheid Israel for July 2nd. Joining PACBI and Punks Against Apartheid in this campaign, AAA has also sent an unpublished appeal to the Green Party member regarding the Palestinian call for cultural boycott.
Freedom For Palestine
PRE-ORDER FROM ITUNES ON 31 MAY 2011
Members:
Maxi Jazz (Faithless), Dave Randall (Slovo/Faithless), LSK, the Durban Gospel Choir, members of the London Community Gospel Choir, Jamie Catto (1 Giant Leap) and musicians from around the world
INTERNATIONAL MUSICIANS RELEASE HISTORIC UK SINGLE ‘FREEDOM FOR PALESTINE’
Supported by: War on Want, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, A Just Peace for Palestine, Friends of Al Aqsa, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions UK, Stop the War Coalition, Trust Greenbelt and the A.M.Qattan Foundation. Proceeds go to UK charity War on Want to support projects in Palestine.
Since its publication, “Freedom For Palestine” has been promoted by the rock band Coldplay, and berated by Glenn Beck.
