ain't no Sun-City in Israel - Pixies

Pixies are playing Israel.

Here is a Ha'aretz article detailing Israeli human rights groups asking them not to play. I know that Leonard Cohen should have some idea of what goes on in the Occupied Territories. I am hoping that the Pixies do not know, otherwise it is another favourite band struck from the list. I figure that if Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky can know, the Pixies and Haruki Murakami can know. If Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman can know, then surely it's not too hard for other people to get a bit of awareness.

I will include the first few paragraphs of the Ha'aretz article: Israeli rights group to The Pixies: Don't perform in Israel

An Israeli human rights group is urging the American alternative rock band the Pixies to cancel their June 9 concert in Israel.

"As much as some of us are huge fans and would love to hear your show, we won't cross the international picket line that is growing in numbers steadily nowadays to come and see you," the group Boycott! wrote Monday.

The organization urges academics and artists to shun Israeli institutions in protest of the government's policies in the West Bank. "The picket line might not always be visible; yet it is there."

Last month, a group of British academics unsuccessfully called on singer Elton John to cancel his scheduled performance in Israel this June.

I feel that if you stand for human rights for your group, whether it be equal recognition for same sex partners, or due to ethnicity, or just because you feel that all humans should receive fair treatment, then there are times when you need to examine your actions and see if they are not upholding the stifling actions of other. I would love to see the Pixies, too. I think I might have to take references to them down from my other blog. *Sigh* Jews sans Frontieres has this article on Elton John. Worth reading. Ooh, and there is now a facebook page urging him to reconsider playing.

Carlos Santana
However, Carlos Santana made the conscious, conscientious and abiding by his conscience choice to stay away. Cohen and McCartney played. Cohen might need the money, seeing as his manager swindled him out of his life savings, but McCartney? I only hope that ignorance is at the base of their actions.

Artists Against Apartheid have thanked Carlos Santana here:

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...

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.

Here is a link to the bds movement, boycott, divestments and sanctions. A peaceful way to help end the apartheid, restrictions and human rights abuses that Israel imposes on the people of Palestine

The open letter to the Pixies which is referenced in the Ha'aretz article is available in full here. Will you cross the picket line?

Here is a contact form for 4AD, the Pixies' record label. Why not write them an email, if you feel bds is a viable campaign to peacefully end injustice.

it works like this

These are two images from Banksy, an artist who is famous for drawing pictures on the illegal apartheid wall that Israel is building to both contain and separate the Palestinian people from their lands and from Israel. He is famous for drawing other artworks, too, as you will see from that link to a gallery of some of his pictures.

This wall been condemned by the United Nations, and to tell you the truth, I cannot understand why there is not more outrage about it. I cannot imagine living behind it. I cannot imagine being cut off from my friends, my family, my farmlands and so on. I can't imagine my daily life spent waiting at checkpoints, under curfew, soldiers raiding my house at will.

The west seemed to condemn the Berlin wall and it also has a lot to say about the division between South and North Korea, but this wall, we fully support it. I mean, it is our money and goodwill that is building it. That is, if our politicians are elected to support us. Why? Well, who knows? The media is not allowed to report on this issue in a truthful or outright manner it seems. This is well documented. Just read the Muzzlewatch blog by the Jewish peace group in the blogroll.

The article that ran these two pictures is an article on the controversy that surrounds Banksy's graffiti art. It is ninemsn, so it is very light. The two captions read:

In 2006 he travelled to Israel to paint a series of murals on the West Bank. That is under the caption of the Israeli soldier and donkey. No mention of the nationality of the soldier there, nor any reason why he might be fully armed against a donkey.

The second caption for the second picture reads: He created this graffiti on a wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem. On a wall? As if there are a hundred thousand such walls all over the world, and their existence is perfectly legit, and not to be questioned. As if this wall is not a matter of contention. On the wall, on the apartheid wall. Give me strength.

Possibly, this is the only way that mainstream media can get such strong images through to the general public, but considering how insipid the commentary is, I doubt that people well get how very seriously wrong this situation is. Hopefully it will make some question a little, it will make some query, feel queasy. Journalists need to keep their jobs, but not all of them are ignorant nor without compassion.

How long before those two pictures are removed from the gallery, I wonder? The usual claims made.

does leonard cohen have a sense of humour?

The following video is from John Barukhov, a very young guy (Israeli) who has a dark sense of humour and a great sense of justice. This is what he has to say for himself:

After reading "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine" by historian Ilan Pappe I decided to compose a song about the settlers whose presence makes a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict very difficult. From a zionists point of view I think it is a clever strategy to occupy the west-bank bit-by-bit. And it seems to work quiet well.
However, it is immoral to expand your territory on the expense of people who try to have a normal life there. Once this period in time will be regarded as a black page in the history of Israel.
By the way, I am not a self-hating-jew. I just dont [sic] agree with some aspects of Israeli politics.

I came across the video at the Artists Against Apartheid site.



A message for Leonard Cohen, too. He is set to tour Israel in September. The story is reported here.

the longest letter

Art. This is a great story. I read the whole text somewhere else on these endless trawling days of the web... ahh, here we go. The whole letter is 1,968 words, which is not too much for a computer to handle, but is a substantial piece of text when it is being painted on the apartheid wall. The text is an open letter from Farid Esack (1959), who

is a writer, Muslim, scholar and human rights activist, well known for his opposition to apartheid and his appointment by Nelson Mandela as a gender equity commissioner. Esack has also been involved with the organisation Positive Muslims, which is dedicated to helping HIV-positive Muslims in Africa. He has been teaching at many universities, including Harvard University and Xavier University in the United States of America, the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Farid Esack is mawlana, a religious scholar. At the age of 15 he went to Karachi, Pakistan where he studied in a madrassah for eight years. Esack's mission is to create tolerance and understanding between ethnic and religious groups. In Pakistan he was shocked by the discrimination of Christians and the hate against Jews. In Palestine he saw the devastating effect of a new apartheid. On the request of the Sendamessage Foundation, Holland, Farid Esack wrote a letter, which will be sprayed on the wall at Ram (near Ramallah) of 2,625 metres.

The following is the beginning of the letter. Sendamessage has a wonderful website. Please visit, especially as each word of the letter, or so many characters, is being paid for via donation. The begininning of the letter is below, and the painting has begun. Non-violent resistance, again. It is a joint project between the Dutch group and one in Palestine. There is plenty of transparency on their website.

On the Wall near Ramallah.
Minimal length: 2,625 metres.

The full letter by Farid Esack comprises 1,998 words or 11,643 characters. Each 1.5-metre section of standard concrete wall segment will hold seven characters or spaces. This means that the full letter will stretch over 1,662 segments of wall, giving it total length of 2,493 metres. If you now add 88 empty segments to separate the 89 sentences, the total length will be 2,625 metres. At the end of the letter there will be plenty of room for extra signatures. With those we expect to surpass the 3,000 metres. However, we are not after a world record. This is about justice for the Palestinians. After 61 years of neglect, oppression and dispossession they deserve a message the world will not readily forget. This message, put into words by Farid Esack, deserves all the public and media attention it can get. [My emphasis].

This is a preview of what the letter will look like, and work on it has started as evidenced by the photo in this blog, courtesy of artists against apartheid.

My dear Palestinian brothers and sisters, I have come to your land and I have recognized shades of my own. My land was once one where some people imagined that they could build their security on the insecurity of others. They claimed that their lighter skin and European origins gave them the right to dispossess those of a darker skin who lived in the land for thousands of years. I come from a land where a group of people, the Afrikaners, were genuinely hurt by the British. The British despised them and placed many of them into concentration camps. Nearly a sixth of their population perished.

Then the Afrikaners said, ‘Never again!’. And they meant that never again will harm come unto them with no regard to how their own humanity was tied to that of others. In their hurt they developed an understanding of being’s God chosen people destined to inhabit a Promised Land. And thus they occupied the land, other people’s land, and they built their security on the insecurity of black people. Later they united with the children of their former enemies – now called “the English”. The new allies, known simply as ‘whites’, pitted themselves against the blacks who were forced to pay the terrible price of dispossession, exploitation and marginalization as a result of a combination of white racism, Afrikaner fears and ideas of chosenness. And, of course, there was the ancient crime of simple greed.

I come from Apartheid South Africa.

Arriving in your land, the land of Palestine, the sense of deja vu is inescapable. I am struck by the similarities. In some ways, all of us are the children of our histories. Yet, we may also choose to be struck by the stories of others. Perhaps this ability is what is called morality. We cannot always act upon what we see but we always have the freedom to see and to be moved. Continue reading.