Artists Bid Farewell to Shimon Peres
By: Nick Lieber, Editorial Associate and Analyst, Creative Community For Peace (CCFP)
“Dear friends,” Shimon Peres said to Barack and Michelle Obama three years ago, “after everything I have seen in my life, I earned the right to believe that peace is attainable.”
Believe in peace, he surely did. And for the last few decades of his life, the once prime minister and president, who passed away this week at the age of 93, fought strongly for it.
We at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) join world leaders and Hollywood artists — many of whom have met President Peres — in mourning his passing and celebrating the enduring legacy of peace he leaves behind.
“In memory of this remarkable human being, Shimon Peres,” Madonna wrote with a photo she posted on Instagram. “A symbol of peace not only for Israel but for the Middle East and the rest of the world.”
“I am deeply saddened at the news of the passing of Former President of Israel Shimon Peres. The world has suffered a great loss,” wrote disco diva Gloria Gaynor, who performed in Israel last July. “My prayers go out to his family, friends, and countless people who have benefited from his life’s work of commitment to peace in Israel and beyond.”
“Godspeed my friend,” said actress Sharon Stone, who together with actor Robert DeNiro, was a guest of honor at the Presidential Conference hosted by President Peres in Jerusalem in 2013.
Godspeed my friend.????
“Israel welcomes the wind of change, and sees a window of opportunity. Democratic and…
Posted by Sharon Stone on Tuesday, September 27, 2016
“R.I.P. Shimon Peres,” actor Michael Douglas shared on Facebook. “We spoke on a panel in 2015 when I visited Israel to receive the Genesis Prize. He was an extraordinary man of peace. I send my deepest condolences to his family and to the people of Israel.”
“President Shimon Peres was a voice of reason who also happened to have the sensibility of a poet…thoughtful and soft-spoken, but his words echoed loudly around the world,” singer Barbra Streisand said. “His mind was expansive and his heart was compassionate. He was a brilliant statesman, gifted with the ability to listen to others who did not share his views and still remained determined to find a path forward.”
President Shimon Peres was a voice of reason who also happened to have the sensibility of a poet…thoughtful and…
Posted by Barbra Streisand on Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Actress Morgan Fairchild called his death a great loss for Israel, for the world, and for peace. Paula Abdul, who met President Peres in 2013 and famously called him “sababa” (Israeli slang for “cool”), said “I’m deeply grieved that Shimon Peres has passed away. Going to Israel was life-changing for me [and] I treasure the memory of my visit [with] him. Shimon Peres’ warmth [and] kindness moves my heart to this day.”
The loss has been taken particularly hard by Israeli artists. The story of President Peres’s life was the story of Israel itself. He served as an inspiration and a source of hope for the people of the embattled country desperately wanting a better future for the entire region.
“A visionary. A man of peace. A friend of all people,” Israeli actress Gal Gadot, best known for her roles in The Fast and the Furious and Wonder Woman, wrote on Twitter. “Goodbye dear Shimon, your memory is cherished and your legacy lives on.”
A visionary. A man of peace. A friend of all people.
Goodbye dear Shimon, your memory is cherished and your legacy lives on. pic.twitter.com/TEYaXzKySF— Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) September 28, 2016
“I have had the privilege to know a rare man [whose] contribution to Israel is impossible to explain in words,” Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli said. “Rest in peace, dear man.”
Though President Peres is gone, we can — and at CCFP we will — ensure that his legacy lives on by continuing to work for the peace he long desired. We believe in the power of the arts and culture to build bridges toward peace.
Out of solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, British musician Brian Eno has refused permission for an Israeli dance company to use his music, citing alleged efforts by the Israeli government to misuse artists to whitewash its crimes.
Mr. Eno’s action is the latest outcome of longstanding efforts by BDS activists to influence artists, to gain legitimacy and amplify their message by preying on artists’ natural affinity for those perceived as victims and appealing to a call for “human rights” for the Palestinians.
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Mr. Eno surely has noble intentions, hoping, as we do, for an end to conflict and the realization of a true peace based on justice. He most certainly believes that his actions will lead to this long-desired outcome. But we at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) can’t help but wonder if he is aware of the true aims of the movement with which he has joined forces.
Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the cultural wing of the BDS movement, has explicitly stated that the end of the occupation of the Palestinian territories, which many people believe to be the end goal of BDS, would not end calls for boycott.
Instead, BDS demands the full “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to homes that were vacated in 1948. This, Mr. Barghouti has pointed out, would result not in a Palestine next to an Israel, but rather a “Palestine next to a Palestine.” In other words, the end of the State of Israel and Jewish self-determination.
Thankfully, major artists supporting BDS are few and far between. Hundreds of international artists, including Sia, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Elton John, Alicia Keys, One Republic, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Dionne Warwick, The Black Eyed Peas, Justin Bieber, and many, many others have and will continue to perform in Israel and raise their voices loudly for peace.
In response to Mr. Eno, Batsheva’s artistic director and frequent critic of the Israeli government, Ohad Naharin, wrote: “If boycotting my company would help the Palestinian people, then I would boycott my own show. If the boycott of my work could bring a peace treaty, I would be the happiest person in the world. But I know it would be useless.”
We, and the more than 30,000 people who have signed our anti-boycott petition, could not agree more. BDS does not help Palestinians and will not bring peace.
The BDS movement is anti-peace and anti-coexistence. Through its anti-normalization campaign, it aims to keep Israelis and Palestinians apart, never giving them the chance to gain understanding of and empathy for one another, though both are crucial requirements for realizing true peace based on justice.
We believe art and music, through their ability to unite, can help bring this true peace to fruition. We are deeply saddened to see an artist such as Brian Eno support the BDS movement and deny his music to Batsheva.
We hope Mr. Eno will reflect on the fact that the Israeli government would fund a dance company led by a fierce critic of its policies, that the company would then choose to use music created by a fierce opponent of Israel, and then just maybe come to the conclusion that Israel is an imperfect but strong democracy worthy of engagement rather than boycotts.
Peace depends on it.
Original article in Jerusalem Post.
A-WA: Building Musical Bridges
By: Nick Lieber, Editorial Associate and Analyst, Creative Community For Peace
If you haven’t yet heard of the Israeli band A-WA (pronounced “EY-wah”), you will. The musical trio, comprised of sisters Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim, made a splash last year with the release of their video “Habib Galbi,” which blended hip-hop and reggae with traditional Yemenite music.
They have become a hit in Israel — “Habib Galbi” was the first song in Arabic to make it to number one on the Israeli pop charts — and around the world. They have also — perhaps surprisingly for an Israeli group — attracted a substantial fan base throughout the Arab world, particularly in Yemen.
“We met a Yemeni Muslim guy in New York,” Tagel, the youngest of the three sisters, told Creative Community For Peace (CCFP). “After the concert he said that the first few minutes of the concert he couldn’t move, he was hypnotized. He felt that we took him back to his neighborhood and memories in Yemen.”
Seventy years ago, the Yemenite — meaning Yemeni Jewish — population in Yemen was over 50,000. From 1949-1950, most of them — including the paternal grandparents of the Haim sisters — were brought to Israel to escape the increasingly dangerous climate for their community. They and their descendants now number approximately 350,000.
Today, there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Yemen, and Israeli citizens are banned from the country. Consequently, most Yemenite Jews find themselves cut off from Yemen and Yemeni Muslims, a situation which the Haim sisters believe to be a source of regret and nostalgia in Yemeni communities in Yemen and abroad.
However, through their music, infused with Yemenite folklore and beats, A-WA and other Yemenite Israeli musicians have managed — on a cultural level — to stay connected with the land their ancestors lived on for millennia. They have also — during their performances in Europe and the US, as well as through social media — managed to rekindle the relationship between Yemenite Jews and Yemeni Muslims.
“There was a Yemeni Muslim family that immigrated from Yemen to Paris three years ago and they come to our shows with their little boy and girl dressed up in traditional Yemeni clothes,” Tair, the eldest, told us. “They just love our music and say how much comfort and love they get from it, and that they’re very proud of what we’re doing.”
“For people from Yemen, they’re proud of the community, and the Jewish people who came from Yemen,” Liron, the middle sister, explained.
“They say they’re missing their Jewish brothers,” Tagel added.
“Sometimes people, mostly students from Yemen, come to our shows or write us on Facebook saying ‘Thank you for making us feel strong in these hard times,’” Tair said. “And in Berlin we were the guests of honor at an event called Yemenite Saloon. They took questions from fans from Yemen, and it was really nice.”
We couldn’t help but wonder if their Israeli identity makes it difficult to connect with their fans in the Arab world. In some countries of the Middle East, it’s a crime to interact with Israelis, even to befriend them on Facebook. In others, pressure from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to refrain from “normalizing” relations with Israelis deters people from extending a hand.
“Sometimes they just don’t know what to do with us,” Tair said. “I always say we confuse them in a good way. We celebrate everything that we are. We’re women and Yemenite, and Israeli and Jewish. We’re musicians. And it’s okay to be many things. This is one of our messages to the world. you can be many things and have many identities, and you can feel free to express each one of these.”
“Sometimes they say we know you’re from Israel but we don’t care, it’s just such beautiful music,” Tagel said.
“There was a man [at the Yemenite Saloon] who said ‘Hi I’m from India and I want you to know that we listen to you and we love you there,’” Liron added. “And then a guy from Dubai said ‘Yeah our taxi drivers listen to you.’ And there was a Palestinian guy there.”
“It was beautiful, just beautiful,” Tair said.
“As little girls, we found ourselves very open and identifying with other cultures. I loved Arabic and Greek music from a very young age, so now when I meet somebody from Greece or Morocco I find myself saying ‘OH! Do you know this singer?’” Liron said. “And it’s all connected to us — and we don’t think of politics. We don’t see people as countries, as flags — just as humans, as souls. It might be naive to look at things like this, but it’s a much better and accepting way to communicate with people.”
For the most part in their encounters with their fans around the world, the sisters let their music do the talking, not purposefully emphasizing the fact that they’re Israeli. But sometimes, they find themselves becoming unwitting ambassadors for Israel, correcting the misconceptions people have about the country of their birth.
“One woman in France asked us where we’re from so I told her from Israel, from Tel Aviv,” Tagel said. “And she said ‘But you’re a woman — are you allowed to sing?’ I couldn’t believe that’s what she thought. And the way to show people that we aren’t necessarily what they thought is to come open-minded and to set an example.”
“Someone told us that we bring lots of love, that you can tell, both onstage and off stage that we have lots of love to give,” Tair added.
“And that was nice to hear because it’s exactly what we want to do,” Liron said. “To bring love, to unite people.”
At Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), we believe in the power of musicians to unite, to bring people together through their music, to expose them to new cultures and perspectives and allow them to connect on a deeper level, overcoming preconceived notions and biases. A-WA is the perfect example.
A-WA will soon be on tour in the United States, performing in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, and elsewhere throughout the second half of September. To see a full listing, please click here.
