- Pixies rediscover their conscience!

This from a comment on a post on Mondoweiss, from a guy called Jethro:

Jethro June 6, 2010 at 10:59 pmThe list of artists refusing to play Israel is getting longer week by week:

Carlos Santana
Gil Scott Heron
Snoop Dogg
Elvis Costello
Bono/U2
The Pixies

We’ll have see what happens with these artists still scheduled to play this summer and fall: Madonna, Elton John, Paul McCartnry, Rod Stewart, Diana Krall. (My emphasis)

This comment was in relation to a post entitled Israel, your Sun City moment has arrived detailing that the Pixies have decided NOT to play Israel this week on Wednesday.
Mondoweiss links to a JTA article which carries the following information:

Two other groups, Klaxons and the Gorillaz, canceled their scheduled performances in Israel following the deaths of nine activists during clashes with Israeli Navy commandos during the boarding of one of the flotilla's ships early on May 31.

The cancellations come less than a month following the cancellation of British rocker Elvis Costello, who was making a political protest. Costello called the cancellation of his scheduled June 30 and 31 concerts "a matter of instinct and conscience." (My emphasis)

That's a last-minute cancellation on the part of the Pixies, et al. Good. BDS is how the message is going to get across to the world and to the people on the street. I wrote to the Pixies management back when. I know that others did, too. Richard Falk, the Jewish-American United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights called for people to support BDS in a speech heard on Democracy Now (on the radio in my case) in a bid to stop the unnecessary suffering in Gaza, and the other Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The movement seems to be gaining momentum. If popular artists get behind it, then they can circumvent the seemingly official line of the American government, and of the Australian government, of enabling Israel in its human rights abuse, basically. Or at least bring it to the public's attention, something that the media has a lot of trouble doing.

Now I can pull out Doolittle again with a clear conscience.

Oh, that Mondoweiss post also has a video of Roger Waters singing "We Shall Overcome" in support of the Palestinians.