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March 2017

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

Why Eddie Izzard got into trouble for trying to run a marathon

British comedian Eddie Izzard landed in Israel Thursday afternoon to perform in Tel Aviv in the evening and then to run in the Palestine Marathon on Friday…or so he thought.

Responding to the comedian’s tweet, the official Twitter account of the Palestine Marathon made it clear that they would not allow this, writing, “British comedian Eddie Izzard cannot run for freedom this Friday if he entertains in Tel Aviv on Thursday.”

Eddie Izzard was surely attempting to show his support for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, yet the Marathon — following the decree of BDS and their concept of “anti-normalization” — has essentially told him that that’s impossible, that he has to choose between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Normalization,” in short, is defined as any cooperation or interaction with anybody who violates the central premises or guidelines of the BDS movement, and does not aim to realize its three stated goals, which ultimately aim for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

The “anti-normalization” movement, an outgrowth of BDS,” is dedicated to pressuring Palestinians, Arabs, and people in general not to engage in projects with those whom they consider to be guilty of “normalization.”

So, because Eddie Izzard is performing in Israel — a violation of the BDS guidelines — he is considered guilty of “normalization” and hence is a persona non grata amongst Palestinians. Sadly, this is not a unique situation.

Back in 2009, legendary musician Leonard Cohen scheduled concerts in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Unfortunately, his show in Ramallah was cancelled and BDS claimed victory, saying, “Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel‘s colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel.”

More recently, the same thing happened to Ms. Lauryn Hill, who canceled her show in Israel in 2015 after it became clear that she would be unable to perform in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah, since no Palestinian venues — thanks to pressure from BDS — would agree to host her if she performed in Israel as well.

And it isn’t just the Palestinian Territories — but rather the entire Arab world — that BDS tries to make off-limits to artists who perform in Israel.  In 2013, when Alicia Keys performed in Dubai after her concert in Tel Aviv, BDS urged the venue in Dubai to cancel her show and “tell her that she is not welcome in Arab countries,” simply because she performed in Israel. We saw it again when the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon (CBSI) called on the Lebanese people to boycott Chris Brown’s show if he continued with his performance in Israel, which he did.

In all of these cases, artists are told that they they can either support Israelis or Palestinians — but not both — and that if they perform for Israelis, then they have automatically taken a stand against Palestinians and are no longer welcome among them.

Music, art, and comedy should be used to bring us together, never to tear us apart. Those of us who care about peace must do our utmost to tackle this “us or them” mentality being spread by BDS.

We at Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace and to countering the cultural boycott of Israel, are supremely disheartened by this discriminatory tactic, which has long been propagated by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

CCFP Staff
In Article

BRITNEY SPEARS TO PERFORM IN ISRAEL, PROMOTERS SAY BDS INFLUENCE WANING

BY 
MARCH 28, 2017 19:57, Jerusalem Post
Spears’ concert, which was announced in a swanky Tel Aviv hotel, looks like a done deal.

After years of fighting to get US pop sensation Britney Spears to perform in Israel, promoters have finally set the date of July 3 in Tel Aviv. While Spears is no longer the epicenter of pop music, she still commands a large international crowd, a large price tag and likely the condemnation of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists who will seek to prevent the performance.

According to Guy Beser, CEO of Bluestone Entertainment, which is bringing Spears to Israel, his company has been successful in recruiting big-name artists with little impact from the BDS movement. “When it comes to artists as big as Britney, Guns N’ Roses, or Aerosmith, I don’t think that BDS really effects them,” he said.

The BDS movement rose to prominence in the mid-2000s as a loosely connected group of activists and organizations seeking to pressure Israel economically and politically through cultural, economic and academic boycotts.

A statement by the movement this month said it is petitioning the band Radiohead to call of their July concert, because “such a performance, irrespective of intentions, will help Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid cover up its massive violations of Palestinian human rights.”

Avi Yossef, a promoter with Israeli entertainment giant, the Zappa group, said the impact of BDS is waning in his industry. “In the last two years, we see BDS is having a serious breaking up,” remarked Yossef, “and we feel it here in Israel.”

Nevertheless, a number of acts have canceled their Israeli performances due to BDS pressure, including R&B singer Lauryn Hill in 2015 and Elvis Costello in 2010. Others, including Beyonce and Pharrell Williams, faced BDS pressure and canceled, citing scheduling conflicts. BDS activists typically take to social media with Twitter hashtags and petitions garnering thousands of signatures.

Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), an NGO that supports artists who plan to perform in Israel and face BDS campaigns, has worked with artists such as Alicia Keys and Macy Gray who were considering dropping their Israel shows due to BDS pressure.

Cancellations come at a big loss to Israeli promoters. The Lauryn Hill cancellation cost the Zappa Group somewhere between 3 and 4 million shekels. Hill was scheduled to perform before a crowd of nearly 15,000 people, before she canceled two days prior to the performance, Yossef said.

While Israeli promoters say the BDS phenomenon is negligible, the Israeli government has ramped up its crackdown on BDS supporters, citing it as a strategic threat. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has gone as far as comparing the movement to terrorism.

Erdan leads Israel’s anti-BDS effort as Strategic Affairs Minister and hopes to compile a database of around 20 of the main Israelis involved in the BDS movement. Meanwhile, the Knesset passed a law earlier this month allowing the Interior Ministry to ban foreign BDS activists and supporters from the country.

According to Ronny Hatchwell, an industry relations manager for CCFP, said BDS influence against the Israeli concert industry “is growing, but it’s not working. In the last two years we can safely say that BDS has failed.”

Hatchwell added that the impact of BDS is much less than the financial burden of bringing artists to Israel. “The promoter has to take care of the ambulances, the police, the security, the whole thing, and they don’t get any government help,” he said. Moreover, equipment for an artist’s show is usually flown to Israel on a stopover from their European tours, adding extra financial burden.

The Britney Spears concert will cost more than two million dollars, according to the website of broadcaster Reshet.

Where BDS activists have impact is on smaller acts that more closely manage their brand and tours. “Floods and floods of pressure on social media, there are people who will write to them all day every day and that’s why the bigger artists aren’t usually effected,” said Nick Lieber, a project manager at CCFP. “Because if they get a hundred tweets a day from BDS activists, it’s a blip on the radar and they don’t even notice, but if you have 40,000 Twitter fans and people are writing to you all day, you are going to notice.”

Spears’s concert, which was announced in a swanky Tel Aviv hotel, looks like a done deal. However, just like every major artist who chooses to play in Israel, she will face mounting pressure. “Usually we face [BDS pressure] after the announcement,” remarked Bluestone Entertainment’s Beser. “Now it will start.”

Read the original article at The Jerusalem Post. 

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

Banksy – fostering dialogue or creating propaganda?

The British artist Banksy — who keeps his identity a secret — has opened a hotel in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The hotel itself is a work of art, which, according to the artist’s website, attempts to tell the story of the conflict from all sides and facilitate dialogue and understanding. They “offer an especially warm welcome to young Israelis” who wish to venture into the Palestinian city.

Though set to open later this month, the hotel’s opening ceremony was held this week, with British musician Sir Elton John (remotely) performing as the guest of honor.

Elton John was an excellent choice. Having performed in Israel multiple times, he has taken a strong stand against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement — which seeks to isolate Israel with the end goal of eliminating it as the Jewish state — and in favor of dialogue and cooperation.

“No one could have stopped me from coming here,” he said at his 2010 show in Tel Aviv. “We’re spreading peace and love on this stage and we’re happy to be here.”

We at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) — an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace and to countering the cultural boycott of Israel — applaud the opening of this hotel and its attempt at dialogue. As we have long believed, art broadens our horizons, opens us to new perspectives, and allows us to connect on the most basic human level.

While we hope that the hotel will serve this purpose just like Elton did in Tel Aviv, it is important to make some clarifications.

The first is that the hotel itself is located in a city that is under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, due to safety concerns, Jewish Israeli citizens are not generally permitted to enter these cities, making it rather difficult for Israelis to be part of the dialogue taking place within the hotel.

The second is that the security barrier itself has long served as a source of inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric against Israel, which has merely served to increase tension and dampen hope for rational dialogue. Banksy himself has been creating works of art on the barrier for quite some time, which unfortunately have shown a one sided view of the conflict.

The obvious choice of the location of the hotel and its namesake — alongside the security barrier — was selected for its symbolism. It is important to remember that, despite the ugliness of the barrier and the hardships it has certainly placed on Palestinian civilians, it was constructed to keep all citizens of Israel, be they Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze or Bedouin, safe from daily acts of terrorism.

Despite these challenges and concerns, we wish the hotel great success with its stated aim of creating dialogue through art. We encourage the hotel proprietors to not allow this hotel to become a one-sided marketing tool of propaganda, but instead to use art as a tool to truly bring people together and encourage thoughtful, engaged and respectful dialogue. We at CCFP will continue to work to accomplish the same, and offer our support to find new avenues of creative collaboration.

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