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CCFP Staff
In Ignore

Colombian superstar Carlos Vives rebuffed BDS pressure, had a very special night in Tel Aviv

Despite facing weeks of intense pressure from supporters of the boycott Israel movement, Grammy Award-winning Colombian musician Carlos Vives (perhaps best-known in the USA for his collaboration with fellow Colombian superstar Shakira on their 2016 single “Bicicleta“) went ahead with his July 31 show in Tel Aviv, tweeting soon after that it was a very special night.

Over the past month, Carlos has been on a world tour, traveling across the globe to share his music with his fans. He performed in Chile, Costa Rica, Germany, and the United Kingdom without a hitch. When it came to his July 31 concert in Tel Aviv, however, he was attacked by activists attempting to make Israel — and only Israel — off limits to international artists.

BDS Colombia, the main anti-Israel group in Carlos’s home country, launched a petition calling on him not to perform in Tel Aviv. It attracted thousands of signatures and was circulated by boycott groups around the world. In the days and weeks leading up to his Tel Aviv show, boycott activists bombarded his social media accounts with misleading information about Israel, portraying it as an “apartheid state” and trying to force him to cancel his concert.

As an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry who are dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace and to countering the cultural boycott of Israel, CCFP jumped into action behind the scenes, offering our support to Carlos and his representatives. In the end, Carlos decided to rebuff the boycott pressure and join the many Latin American artists who have performed in Israel in recent years. These artists include Maluma, Wisin, Daddy Yankee, Bomba Estereo, Ricky Martin, Nicky Jam, and Carlos Santana, among others.

“We’ve traveled to many countries, looked for accordion music in other cultures different to ours,” Carlos said in a video posted to his Instagram account. “Languages and history, politics and culture separate us. But what unites is all is music.”

CCFP Staff
In Ignore

Grace Chatto, Clean Bandit

“When we started the band, we were seven, and one of them didn’t want to travel to Israel [because of the boycott]. I found that very terrible and stupid, and we found ourselves in an unpleasant situation because of it, but unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it. Now we can do what we want to do, which is to visit Israel and perform. So yes, I wanted to come to you my whole life, and I am very excited.”

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

Fauda star Itzik Cohen: ‘The show has become a great force for bringing people together’

Itzik Cohen, who plays Captain Gabi Ayub on the hit Israeli TV show Fauda, wrote this guest blog for Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), expressing his views on the show and on its contribution to peace.

Fauda is a startup, a series that was made on a very low budget, and in the midst of the summer heat, with a great deal of tension of a possible war in the air. None of the actors or creators thought for a minute that the whole world would embrace the series. Most of us thought that even in Israel it would be considered a niche series.

Reality proved otherwise. In fact, Fauda changed everything we knew about Israeli Television and it became a phenomenon. Everyone who was part of the series upgraded their career.

But everything begins and ends with sensitive and meticulous work. The show’s creators, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, together with Assaf Bernstein, the director of the first episode, placed an emphasis on the complexities and sensitivities of the characters, and insisted on not creating Jewish or Arab stereotypes.

This is the reason they cast me. I come from a background in comedy and musicals, and so fit beautifully as the opposite type cast for the dramatic and complex role of Captain Gabi Ayub. They didn’t want the stereotype of the tough and macho Shabak investigator, but instead wanted to reach the heart of the conflict in order to show how people find themselves in complex and dangerous situations that end up touching our hearts.

Read the rest on the Times of Israel: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fauda-star-itzik-cohen-the-show-has-become-a-great-force-for-bringing-people-together/

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