Grammy-nominated American rapper Vic Mensa recently published an article in TIME magazine wherein he compared the experiences of Palestinians to his experiences as a black man in America.
This article, unfortunately, contains a great deal of inaccuracies and omits a great deal of context. The fault for this lies less with Mr. Mensa and more with Dream Defenders, the organization that planned his trip to the region.
“I do not pretend to be familiar with every nuance of the longstanding turmoil that engulfs Israel and Palestine,” Mr. Mensa acknowledged in his article. “I can only speak to the experiences I had there.”
The problem is that the experiences he had there were carefully crafted by Dream Defenders, which makes no secret of its opposition to the very existence of the State of Israel, and which brought Black artists and activists on a delegation to the region to give them a view of the situation which would lead them to adopt the same position.
The description of the delegation on the Dream Defenders website includes shockingly incendiary and hateful language, including referring to Israel as a “settler colonial project” and accusing Israel of massacring Palestinians in order to test and sell military technology.
“After every Israeli assault against Gaza their sales have been a part of the package,” they write, evoking classic stereotypes of the greedy Jew.
Is it any surprise that an organization working to delegitimize self-determination for the Jewish people and the existence of the State of Israel would create a trip that makes Israel appear illegitimate?
As we so recently celebrated the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., we can’t help but think of what this great man had to say about Israel and how he would have felt about a Black rights organization working to demonize it.
As Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader who worked with Dr. King, wrote: “On March 25, 1968, less than two weeks before his tragic death, [Dr. King] spoke out with clarity and directness stating, ‘peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.’”
The world and the region have changed drastically since Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, but that much, at least, remains the same.
According to Clarence B. Jones, Dr. King’s attorney and close friend, Dr. King also “warned repeatedly that anti-Semitism would soon be disguised as anti-Zionism,” another term for opposition to the existence of Israel.
The anti-Zionism of Dream Defenders is in no doubt shaped in part by Linda Sarsour, an activist who serves as one of its eight Advisory Board members. Ms. Sarsour is an avowed anti-Zionist and a supporter of the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which works to isolate Israel in the cultural, academic, economic, and diplomatic arenas with the ultimate goal of ending its existence as the homeland of the Jewish people.
We at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) — an organization comprised of high-level entertainment industry figures dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace, defending artistic freedom, and countering the cultural boycott of Israel — hope Mr. Mensa will have the chance to travel back to the region and gain a wider perspective on this supremely complex conflict.
Jason Derulo, Alicia Keys, Freddie Gibbs, Rihanna, Damian, Julian, and Ziggy Marley, Bobby McFerrin, Craig David, Gloria Gaynor, Lisa Simone, Alan Youngblood Hart, Buddy Guy, Wiz Khalifa, Noname, and DJ Black Coffee, are just a few of the many Black artists who have traveled to Israel over the past several years and seen much more than the narrow worldview Dream Defenders showed Mr. Mensa.
Only by rejecting the uncompromising black and white narrative of groups like Dream Defenders and BDS and acknowledging the conflict’s many shades of gray can we hope to make any progress toward resolving it.
By Allison Stewart January 12 in The Washington Post
On Dec. 18, New Zealand pop music sensation Lorde announced plans to play concerts in Israel and Russia. On Dec. 24, she announced the cancellation of her Israeli concert, which was scheduled for June 5 at the Tel Aviv Convention Centre. “I’m not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one,” she said in a statement.
In the six days between Lorde’s concert announcement and her cancellation, an increasingly pitched battle played out, both in public and behind the scenes, to win over the 21 year-old pop star. Activists and fans in favor of the ongoing cultural boycott of Israel because of the country’s policies related to Palestinians urged her to reconsider; pro-Israeli activists and fans lobbied for her to hold fast.
In recent years, these artistic tug-of-wars over artists including Radiohead, Lauryn Hill and Nick Cave, have become increasingly common, although Lorde’s change of heart has been the highest-profile musical victory yet for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of BDS, says his group made an appeal to Lorde, and although she did not get in touch with them, other artists facing the same dilemma had.
“Palestinian, Israeli and international BDS activists always try, whenever possible, to appeal to artists in private, and if there is no response, then we go public with our respectful, rational and morally consistent call, largely on social media,” he said in an email to The post. “Mobilizing support from the given artist’s fans and from other cultural figures is key to the success of the appeal.”
A young Jewish woman and a young Palestinian woman in New Zealand wrote a letter to Lorde, published on the website The Spinoff a few days after her concert was announced, appealing to the singer’s sense of social justice, and gently urging her to be “on the right side of history.” It drew her attention, and provided a rare window into her thought process. “Thank u for educating me i am learning all the time too” the singer tweeted before canceling her show four days later. (Lorde’s representatives did not reply to requests for comment for this article.)
If there’s one thing on which both sides can agree, it’s that 21 year-old artists from half a world away can’t be expected to understand the full details of a complicated issue tied to one of the defining geopolitical conflicts of our time. Musicians of any age who contemplate playing Israel sometimes lack awareness of the risks and rewards.
Tour promoters warn acts in advance of any “delicacies they need to be aware of,” says Oren Arnon, a promoter at leading Israeli company Shuki Weiss, who did not promote the Lorde show. Artist managers warn fellow artist managers. David Renzer, a music publishing veteran who co-founded the entertainment industry anti-boycott group the Creative Community For Peace, says his organization works within the record industry to outline the merits of playing in Israel, and warn of its complications.
“Part of what we do is educate them, and say, ‘Guys, you’re going to be hearing from these boycott groups, but there’s things you should be aware of,’ ” he says. “Part of it is an educational process. Once artists go, they tend to have pretty amazing experiences. It’s possible that there may be an artist that just doesn’t want to get harassed. Several artists have come out and said that they felt harassed by boycott groups, and even physically threatened.”
The response to Lorde’s cancellation has been swift, and seismic. A hundred artists, including Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and author Alice Walker, signed an open letter supporting her. Israel’s Culture Minister said she hoped the singer would reconsider, while its ambassador to New Zealand asked for a meeting. Critics on Twitter pointed out the human-rights abuses in Russia, where Lorde still plans to play two shows. In a roundly condemned full-page ad in The Washington Post, an American rabbi suggested that “21 is young to become a bigot,” its text juxtaposed with an image of Lorde appearing to stare skeptically at the Israeli flag.
Both sides have accused the other of extremist rhetoric, acting in bad faith and bullying, allegations that have become commonplace in the ongoing war for celebrity hearts and minds. Arnon claims Cave, the Australian post-punk icon, endured “months and months of humiliation” before his November shows in Tel Aviv went on as planned. Josh Block, chief executive and president of the Israel Project, a nonprofit group that advocates in favor of Israel, says artists who back out of their concerts are often primarily motivated by a desire to end the controversy. “Lorde, a young kid from New Zealand, announces that she’s going to go to Israel, and within a few minutes, they get this massive onslaught from a highly organized group of extremists. . . . It’s just easier to make it go away.”
The most prominent voice in supporting touring boycotts of Israel has become Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters. The man responsible for “Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall” has spent the past decade becoming increasingly outspoken on the issue, and uses his fame within the music industry to confront artists who plan to perform in Israel.
In 2006, when the BDS movement was in its infancy, Waters famously played to more than 50,000 people in a chickpea field at Neve Shalom, a cooperative Israeli village that is home to both Jews and Palestinian Arabs; the show was originally scheduled for Tel Aviv. He has since become one of the BDS movement’s most visible spokespeople and a lightning rod for anti-boycott forces, who accuse him of anti-Semitism, a charge he has vehemently denied.
Waters often writes appeals to fellow artists considering playing Israel. Those exchanges don’t always go well. “The Israelis couch it, ‘How brave is Radiohead, to stand up against Roger Waters and his bullying,’ ” Waters says. “What? I had a big email exchange with Thom Yorke. I can’t tell you what was in it, but it was pretty weird. At the end of the day, I have no idea. I cannot begin to explain to you why they did it.”
BDS activists compare performing in Israel to crossing a picket line. Pro-Israel groups say musicians should come to Israel and see for themselves. “When [Jon] Bon Jovi performed, it was important for him to see the Wailing Wall,” Renzer says. “When Justin Timberlake performed, he visited the Wailing Wall and really wanted to feel the power of it, and the same thing with Justin Bieber.”
In 2018, even playing a place like Neve Shalom would be unacceptable, Waters says. “I think those days have gone. I slightly regret that I did that. I kind of forgive myself, because that was 10 years ago, and things have gotten a lot worse since then. I feel like I’ve maybe made amends by such activism as I’ve managed since then.”
Many of Waters’s fellow legacy acts are moving in the opposite direction. Israel attracts a perhaps greater-than-usual share of baby boomers such as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Elton John. Classic rock acts are often indifferent to social media pressure campaigns, and their fans tend to have enough disposable income to withstand the country’s frequently higher ticket prices.
Emerging concert markets such as Israel represent an opportunity for artists who have come to rely on touring to make up for income lost to dwindling album sales in the new era of streaming. The Israeli concert market has been healthy for almost as long as BDS has been in existence, but it’s impossible to know who is staying away. Artists sometimes scrap concerts that haven’t yet been announced, blame cancellations on nonexistent “scheduling problems,” or, like alt-rock legends the Pixies, cancel shows only to return later.
Promoters live with the constant threat that a musician might bolt, whether it’s an apolitical artist who just wants to avoid a public thrashing, or someone privately sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, observing what Barghouti calls a “silent boycott.” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Pharrell Williams, Elvis Costello and Lauryn Hill have all canceled dates in Israel, the latter two suggesting issues of conscience were responsible.
Lorde’s cancellation is seen as a needed, high-profile win for pro-boycott activists. Barghouti cites the Montgomery bus boycotts and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa as models for the movement, and compares Lorde to Bruce Springsteen, who canceled a North Carolina show after the passage of that state’s controversial “bathroom bill.”
“He engaged in a conscientious act of cultural boycott, just like Lorde did when she canceled her show in Tel Aviv,” Barghouti wrote. Though these are fraught, powerful references — nobody wants to be on the wrong side of a boycott, or apartheid, or Bruce Springsteen — BDS has yet to resonate on a global scale in the way other historic boycotts have. Waters says that while BDS is growing, “It hasn’t taken off like the anti-apartheid movement did. Because that was sort of fashionable, and also there wasn’t a big movement trying to stop it.”
Although no one knows yet whether Lorde’s decision is an isolated event or the beginning of a cascade of similar cancellations, activists such as Waters view her decision as a pivotal moment for the BDS movement. “She must be quite bright, because she looked at the situation and went, ‘Wow, no, I cannot nail my colors to that mast,’ ” he says. “And so she’s hugely important. If I could find three or four or five of those in my generation — they’re there, they’re just a bit limp-wristed. I know a few of them, but they won’t stand up and go, ‘I’m BDS,’ and until they do, we will go on growing without them.”
Lorde will almost certainly be one of the last major artists to schedule an Israel concert date without appearing to have fully considered the global implications. From now on, if it weren’t the case already, merely scheduling a concert date in Israel will be considered a political act.
“It’s a very tricky issue,” the concert promoter Arnon says. “And you never come out of it clean.”
Even before celebrities announce their visits, they must be braced to weather the inevitable boycott storm, says pro-Israel artists’ collective
11 January 2018, 11:42 am
When artists book a show in Israel, they can expect a few things: a meaningful visit to the Western Wall, sunbathing in Tel Aviv, a dinner invite from the prime minister… and an intensive, aggressive online campaign demanding they cancel.
Even before packing up their sunscreen, negative anti-Israel, pro-boycott messages can be so overwhelming that some artists back out from sheer distress.
Bracing an artist ahead of time is the best way to prevent performers from caving in to the boycott pressure, Allison Krumholz, the executive director of Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), told The Times of Israel.
CCFP is a Los Angeles-based pro-Israel artists group that offers support and resources to help industry executives and their clients appropriately handle campaigns against their appearances in Israel. The organization was founded in 2012 after a string of high-profile performers caved to political pressure and canceled their shows here, Krumholz said.
David Renzer, the current chairman and CEO of Spirit Music Group, founded CCFP with Steve Schnur, a worldwide music executive at Electronic Arts (EA). Today, its international advisory board is comprised of more than 50 high-level entertainment industry figures.
We provide the counter to the attack and a balance to the narrative
“We provide the counter to the attack and a balance to the narrative,” Krumholz said. “We may not all share the same politics, but we do agree that singling out Israel as a target of cultural boycotts will not further peace.”
Nick Lieber, the organization’s editorial associate and analyst, said CCFP focuses on building personal relationships with industry executives and using them appropriately when there is concern of a boycott.
When an artist considers canceling a show in Israel or in fact, cancels it, CCFP has its staff or board members reach out to the artist and their representatives, encouraging them to reconsider and providing them with the “support” they need to make an informed decision, said Lieber.
What that support entails varies, he said.
Lieber said that the organization also creates educational forums for industry figures around promoting peace through the arts, such as an event CCFP held in June at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles which brought executives together under the theme of using the arts to build bridges.
But CCFP’s ability to properly prepare artists depends largely on the cooperation of the Israeli promoters, some of whom prefer not to warn their artists about the likelihood of backlash that inevitably accompanies an announcement of an upcoming show in Israel.
“Concert promoters in Israel have different approaches for addressing BDS pressure with the artists they bring,” Krumholz said.
Some promoters, said Krumholz, do speak of the possibility of BDS backlash with their artists ahead of time, but despite high-profile cancellations, some still don’t.
“We’re of the opinion that it’s better to do so, as a number of cancellations have simply been due to the shock of suddenly coming under massive pressure on social media and were completely unrelated to any of the actual arguments BDS makes,” she said.
Pop star Lorde recently canceled an Israel performance set for this upcoming June, days after announcing on Twitter that she was considering pulling out of the gig. The singer said at the time that she was reconsidering due to a campaign led by two pro-Palestinian activists in her native New Zealand, which was also accompanied by a virulent anti-Israel social media crusade.
One of the activists, Justine Sachs, is a founder of Dayenu — a Jewish online activism page that promotes a boycott of Israel over its presence in the West Bank.
“I think that art is politics, I think that artists are connected to political statements, I think that for an artist to go to Israel now is a political statement,” Sachs told Walla, a Hebrew media website.
In the end, Lorde claimed that the “overwhelming number of messages and letters” she received led to her decision to cancel the show.
Lorde’s social media accounts were flooded by an apparently highly organized BDS campaign.
“Nearly every artist who schedules a show in Israel receives some level of boycott pressure on social media, but some, including Lorde, certainly receive far more than others,” said Lieber.
After Lorde caved to pressure, Eran Arielli, co-founder of Naranjah, the company that was promoting her Israel concert, wrote on Facebook that, “The truth is that I was naive to think that an artist of her age would contain the pressure involved in coming to Israel, and I take full responsibility.”
The cancellation isn’t a first for Naranjah, the concert producer wrote on Facebook. (Arielli declined to be interviewed for this article.)
Expressing its disappointment with Lorde’s decision, CCFP produced a statement signed by 50 industry executives and artists.
To maintain its close ties to industry executives, CCFP can’t discuss what happened behind the scenes with Lorde, but Lieber said he thinks “the letter, compounded with all of the negative feedback, probably really affected her.”
Lieber said that social media chatter revolving around Lorde’s Israel show was too congested to provide a concrete breakdown of sides — though the majority of comments on the singer’s social media accounts were anti-Israel and pro-boycott.
He believes that about 50 percent are anti-Israel, 25% are pro-Israel and another 25% are extremely pro-Israel to the point of being unhelpful to the cause by name-calling and insulting the artist.
Although cases such as Lorde’s make major headlines, such cancellations are rare these days. In recent years, Israel has also seen a flood of veteran acts, which tend to handle BDS pressure with more finesse. Notably, Paul McCartney, who despite receiving death threats, went ahead with his concert coinciding with Israel’s 60th birthday in 2008 and also visited a music school in Bethlehem. Leonard Cohen, who after scheduling a 2009 concert in Ramat Gan, offered to play a corresponding concert in Ramallah. His offer was spurned.
Other artists like Radiohead and Nick Cave have not merely ignored but actively hit back against BDS efforts. This past November, Cave went so far as to say that it was thanks to BDS that he decided to play in Israel.
“I love Israel, and I love Israeli people,” said Cave at a press conference in Tel Aviv, adding that he wanted to take “a principled stand against anyone who tries to censor and silence musicians. So really, you could say, in a way, that the BDS made me play Israel.”
Since 2011, CCFP has tracked more than 1,000 concerts by international artists in Israel, including performances by Sia, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna and Lady Gaga.
About 30 artists — including Elvis Costello, Thurston Moore, and Lauryn Hill — have canceled due to BDS pressure during this period. However, a handful of those ultimately decided to play in Israel at a later date, such as the Pixies and Santana, Krumholz said.
Eventually, Krumholz hopes her organization will be made redundant as boycotts increasingly prove an ineffective means to promoting peace.
“If anything,” she said, “turn up the music, expose art to wider audiences, and encourage people from all cultures to interact, communicate and inspire peace and understanding.”