Boycott Israel group posts silent video after YouTube removes original
Category: BDS
CulturEscapes and the Moral Duty of BDS Today
The neutral Switzerland is about to host a yearly Culturescapes festival. Every year the festival focuses on a different country. This year- the most successful for cultural boycott, yet- it just had to play into Desmond Tutu’s hands and focus on Israel.
A Word about Culture
Culture is a word I’ve been hearing a lot lately. Israel’s Brand Israel campaign is focusing on PR apartheid; Hiding it’s atrocities as best it can, and highlighting it’s “advantages”:
In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6 niches were identified in which Israel has a relative advantage… The 6 niches through which it is planned to promote Israel, in the world, are environment (with an emphases on desert agriculture); Science and technology (medicine, internet and hi-tech); Culture and art; Human variety and tradition; lifestyle and leisure culture; Tikun Olam [=Fixing the world] (support of populations of special needs).
Continue reading “CulturEscapes and the Moral Duty of BDS Today”
My Journey to BDS
by Roger Waters
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.
Roger Waters on BDS and the walls of division
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters talks to Riz Khan about his passionate campaign for the rights of the Palestinian people and why, more than 30 years after he wrote the globally-acclaimed album ‘The Wall’, he is focusing on another wall – the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank.
The Macy Gray Effect
A few weeks ago, while I was in al-Araqib after the 11th ethnic cleansing attempt (yesterday was the 15th), I was interviewed by the Israeli Channel 10 culture editor, about Vanessa Paradis’ cancellation of her performance in Israel. Only one of the sentences I uttered in the 15-minute interview was included in the segment, and the rest is somewhere on the Channel 10 editing floor. So in an act of preservation, I’d like to paraphrase a part of the interview:
Channel 10 culture editor: “OK, so Vanessa Paradis canceled, do you really think anybody cares?”
Myself: “You came all the way to al-Araqib to ask me that, I think it’s pretty effective.”
Continue reading “The Macy Gray Effect”
Macy Gray, I Don’t Want a 4 Minute Peace!
Dear Macy Gray,
I’ve publicly declared that I won’t give up on you and I intend to keep to my resolution. You keep on asking how not playing in Israel will help the situation. You seem to believe that you are nothing but a 4 minute escape for people (the majority of which, as I explained in my last letter, are soldiers). I believe in each of our endless ability to change the reality around us. But in order to do so, we need to see the reality for what it is. This is what my letters to you are about. This is what the 20 Days to Macy Gray Facebook Project is about. It’s an opportunity for people to empower each other. I hope you’ll allow us to bring back your faith in yourself, that your voice matters, and that you can change this harsh world for the better, for the long run, and not only for the 4 minute duration of a song.
Continue reading “Macy Gray, I Don’t Want a 4 Minute Peace!”
An Eyewitness’ Letter to Macy Gray
Dear Macy,
I’ll say it again, I truly appreciate that you took your contemplations public. I can tell by what you write that you’ve been thrown into a world that its intensity is unknown to you. I write to you consistently because your heart is on your sleeve, and even though you seem to have made up your mind, I feel the doubt in every public utterance you make.
I’ll introduce myself; My name is Tali Shapiro. I’m an Israeli citizen and I just came back from the village of Nabi Salleh in the West Bank and read your latest blog post. I’m an activist that joins the weekly demonstrations in the village. There are weekly demonstrations in many villages. Though it’s a part of a movement for Palestinian human rights, each village wakes to dissent for individual reasons. Nabi Sallah has had its land annexed by the near by Halamish settlement and its water spring closed off from them by military force. Ever since then, they’ve been demonstrating.
Demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories come with a heavy price. Whether its the wounded and dead, or the constant harassment. Nabi Saleh has been subject to military closure, houses sprayed with putrid water (another method of “crowd dispersal”), night raids, arrests of activists (regardless of age), and torture which includes threats, beatings and contorted body positioning.
I write to you as I come back from one of these night raids. I live in Tel Aviv by choice. I choose to come to a war zone at night, to witness exactly what is being done in the name of my security:
The Reut Report: Taking Over the World – One Antisemite at a Time
The Reut Institute sent their “National Security Team” for a whole year in London; conducted interviews with over 150 people (“experts and activists from a range of fields”); Studied biology, economics, terrorism, the internet and Frank Sinatra. All this in order to investigate the BDS movement. They wrote a report, mouthfully titled “Building a Political Firewall against the Assault on Israel’s Legitimacy: London as a Case Study” and this is their conclusion:
Hamas Did It Because They Want to Destroy Israel!
Continue reading “The Reut Report: Taking Over the World – One Antisemite at a Time”
Why Academic Boycott?
Last week I thoroughly dealt with the not-so-scholarly and o-so-fallacious Nobel Laureates’ statement on BDS. In almost pure cosmic irony I just got a link from a friend to a Prime Minister’s Office “non-tender”: Request for information about improving Israel’s image on U.S.A campuses.
Now that those talkback-esque arguments are out of the way, let’s get into the direct cynical use the Israeli government makes of the academia, in order to further its propaganda.
[Limited by my translation]:
It Doesn’t Take a Nobel Laureate to Understand the Complex and Seemingly Unsolvable Phenomena of Apartheid
At the end of October, 40 Nobel Laureates decided to collaborate with an overtly Zionist institution and write a dubious-at-best (Fisking will begin momentarily) public statement, denouncing the academic and cultural portion of the initiatives of the growing world-wide BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. Their claims were not new to us, in the movement, nor did they inspire any serious debate, or new thought. Though the statement in itself merited no intellectual response, the mere stature of its authors elicited a response from PACBI (the Palestinian campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel). That said, in the spirit of the free exchange of ideas (and my obsession with taking talkbacks way too seriously), I’d also like to reply to the [n]obel Laureates.
On Ethics and Axioms
“Always shocked but never surprised” has become a mantra to me in the past couple of years. I’ve grown to understand my reality as a place (or rather a twilight zone) where shocking events often happen and ignorant statements are often made, and all without the blink of an eye. No guilt, no shame. No accountability.
P U L S E 