Official Statement from Nigel Kennedy on BBC Censorship

A spokesperson for Nigel Kennedy said:

“Nigel Kennedy finds it incredible and quite frightening that in the 21st century it is still such an insurmountable problem to call things the way they are. He thinks that once we can all face issues for what they really are we can finally have a chance of finding solutions to problems such as human rights, equal rights and even, perhaps, free speech. His first reaction to the BBC’s censorship & imperial lack of impartiality was to refuse to play for an employer who is influenced by such dubious outside forces.

Mr Kennedy has, however, reminded himself that his main purpose is to provide the audience with the best music he can deliver. To withdraw his services would be akin to a taxi driver refusing to drive their customer due to their political incorrectness. He, therefore, is not withdrawing his services that he owes to his audience, but is half expecting to be replaced by someone deemed more suitable than him due to their surplus of opportunism and career aspirations.

Mr Kennedy is glad, however, that by censoring him the BBC has created such a huge platform for the discussion of its own impartiality, its respect (or lack of it) for free speech and for the discussion of the miserable apartheid forced on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government supported by so many governments from the outside world.

Mr Kennedy believes his very small statement during his concert was purely descriptive and not political whatsoever.”

If you are a British TV licence holder with a British postcode, you can sign the petition calling on the BBC to reverse their decision.

Related Links

Why won’t BBC let Nigel Kennedy denounce Israeli apartheid?
Virtuoso violinist Nigel Kennedy hits out at BBC for censoring his Palestine comments at the 2013 Proms

One Proper Vision – One Secular Democratic State Called Palestine : Haidar Eid

Dr. Haidar Eid
Dr. Haidar Eid (Photo: Palestinalibre.org)
Dr. Haidar Eid speaks about opposition in Gaza to the renewed peace negotiations, the need for Palestinian self-critique concerning current political events, waning support for Hamas and the situation in Gaza.

“What is happening now in Gaza is a slow genocide.” – Dr. Haidar Eid

Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr. Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

The world looks to a new round of negotiations under US Secretary of State Kerry – where is Gaza in those talks?

Gaza is diverse and I cannot speak for Gaza as one, but clearly most here are opposed to negotiations. Hamas laid out its official position on Tuesday with officials expressing their dismay at the resumption of talks. Most organizations within the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) – among them the Popular as well as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP and DFLP) – oppose the talks. Only some members of Fatah have fallen for the lie that negotiations might bring a viable solution.

Speaking for myself, as an advocate for one democratic state of Palestine, I oppose the talks, which aim at a two-state solution. We believe that creating two states is no true solution but a racist one. Two viable states have become impossible to achieve – mainly because Israel has created facts on the ground that subvert the whole concept.

But more than that – the two state solution does not guarantee even a minimum of rights for the Palestinians. There is no talk anymore of the right of return for those refugees from villages and towns that were ethnically cleansed in 1948. 75-80% of Gaza’s population are refugees and international law provides for their return – what is there for them?

The Oslo accords never incorporated international law. And most importantly: they never dealt with Israel’s racist measures and apartheid system against Palestinians.

What alternative would you favor?

Fatah is the only force officially supporting negotiations. When I oppose them, I do not represent only Gazans but the majority of Palestinians. Our alternative? Stick to the call supported by most organizations in 2005: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)! The campaign calls on the international community to boycott Israel, divest from its economy and impose sanctions until Israel complies with international law. Then, when there is pressure, we can negotiate.

In South Africa the ANC did not negotiate before it had substantial backing. We cannot negotiate about basic rights at present, and equal rights must be the basis for negotiations about any kind of state. The only just solution is one like in Northern Ireland and South Africa, meaning a secular, democratic state for all.

How can this be achieved?

The first step is serious self-critique. Palestinians have to consider publicly what the leadership of PLO and Hamas have done to the Palestinian cause since the Oslo accords were struck. The past 20 years have led us nowhere. Instead, settlements have expanded and Gaza has been transformed into the largest concentration camp on earth.

Serious self-critique will, secondly, lead to dismantlement of the PA. The institution of the PA gives the wrong impression to the international community of an equality between the sides, as if Palestinians had an also army and occupied another people! We as Palestinians should have a local administration to organize daily life and the resistance, not to undermine it.

Thirdly, we have to forget about the two-state solution. It is a complete waste of time and energy. We should all be talking about one democratic state, because the two state option is a fiction.

What is the situation in Gaza like at the moment? How isolated is the population?

The situation has deteriorated. Israel has tightened its closure. Things have turned worse since last days of Morsi’s government in Egypt, when it decided to destroy all tunnels [on the Egyptian-Gazan border] that are vital for the supply of all basic goods here. After Morsi was ousted the destruction of tunnels continued, and now most are closed.

Furthermore, the only official crossing to Egypt, Rafah, is frequently closed, for example today. Rafah is vital! As all crossing points to Israel are virtually closed, Rafah is the bottleneck out of Gaza.

Hamas first renounced the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, now it lost the Muslim Brotherhood as a mighty ally in Egypt. What does this mean for the Hamas government?

Hamas is in a limbo now. It lost its most important strategic alliances with Iran and Hezbollah, which it gave up for closer relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar. Now that the Muslim Brothers are deposed from the government in Egypt, Hamas is left hanging in the air. And the new Emir in Qatar is showing a new style of diplomacy, increasing pressure on Hamas.

Hamas, as a matter of fact, does not have a clear-cut political vision. You keep hearing different, contradictory positions from various officials. This has also affected talks for reconciliation with Fatah in the West Bank, which have effectively come to a halt.

Gaza is controlled by Hamas, yes, but Hamas is no more than the leading prisoner among the 1.7 million prisoners of Gaza.

What are the current topics of Gaza’s internal politics?

First is the need to end this deadly, medieval siege imposed on Gaza in 2006. A slow genocide is happening here that has already caused the death of about 2,000 people who did not receive vital medical treatment in time. The rate of malnutrition in Gaza is the highest worldwide.

The end of this siege will only come within a political solution to the Palestinian question as a whole. When we talk about negotiations, we are talking about Gaza’s fate as well. That is also why we, activists in Gaza, promote BDS so strongly.

We are highly affected by what is happening in Egypt. We are holding our breath right now. We want Egypt to open the Rafah crossing permanently and unconditionally. It is our only option right now so as to not make us utter hostages to Israel’s will.

And how much support does Hamas enjoy in Gaza today?

Hamas has lost a lot of its popularity as it resorted to repressive tools and tactics against its opponents. Most people who voted for Hamas did so not because they were for Hamas, but because they were against the corruption of the PA and the concept of a two-state solution. As such, Hamas was the only option.

Now people are questioning everything that Hamas said before the election. It promised resistance, but in fact since the ceasefire with Israel in Dec 2012, it does not allow any kind of independent and popular resistance anymore.

Is there a vision for Gaza?

For me, there is one proper vision – a solution for Palestine as a whole that implements UN Resolution 194 which calls for the right of return for all refugees and compensation for their decades in exile. Gaza should become part of one secular democratic state called Palestine.

Israel has another vision – it wants to get rid of Gaza. It wants Gaza to become part of Egypt like it was before 1967 to end all its Gaza problems. The Egyptians do not want and will not allow that. Instead, what is happening now is a slow genocide in Gaza.

Edited in consultataion with Haidar Eid, and reblogged from his interview with Lea Frehse, AIC

To Salif Keita from Friends in South Africa

DEAR MR SALIF KEITA,

“The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine…we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others faces. Yet we would be less than human if we did so. It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice…we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”Nelson Mandela, December 4 1997

BDS South Africa
You may not know me, nor of my work or the organization that I am part of (and am writing on behalf of), BDS South Africa (www.bdssouthafrica.com). However, I (together with millions of South Africans and Africans), of course, know of you. We know of you through your contribution to making this world a better place through, for example, the work of the Salif Keita Global Foundation, being one of our continent’s best ambassadors, and of course, for sharing your “golden” music with so many. It is with this admiration and affinity that we write to you.

With that, kindly receive the warm greetings of BDS South Africa, a South African Palestine solidarity and human rights organization advancing the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel campaign in South Africa. We are writing to you with much concern, concern that you are scheduled to perform in Israel. But, we also write to you with hope, hope that you will heed the call from your fellow artists, Malians who have approached you, French activists, and, most importantly, the Palestinians (with their principled and progressive Israeli allies) who have all called on you in the last few weeks to respect the boycott of Israel, cancel your trip and, in essence, not to support racism and Apartheid. We respectfully offer some background to our position:

ISRAELI RACISM AND “APARTHEID”:

“I never tire of speaking about the very deep distress in my visits to the Holy Land; they remind me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like we did when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. My heart aches…Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Separate roads[1], separate buses[2], having a law that allows one ethnic group automatic citizenship but prevents another group (millions of whom are refugees in neighboring countries) citizenship and access to their previous homes are just some of the ways in which Israel discriminates against Palestinians [3]. We will not go through the details of the legislation, practices and acts of racism and apartheid that Israel is enforcing against the Palestinians, those are well documented by Amnesty International [4], Human Rights Watch[5] and, in fact, our own South African government, in 2009, commissioned our official state research body, the South African Human Sciences Research Council to answer the question whether Israel is guilty of practicing apartheid. The HSRC, in its subsequent 300-page report found Israel to be guilty of the crime of Apartheid as well as colonialism. That report can be found here: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/democracy-goverance-and-service-delivery/report-israel-practicing-apartheid-in-palestinian-territories

This position, that Israel practices Apartheid and racism against the indigenous Palestinians, was then confirmed by the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which sat in Cape Town in November 2011[6]. In March 2012 the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination made similar findings[7]. Earlier this year, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN HRC), an official structure of the UN, released a scathing report in Geneva, Switzerland, on the state of human rights in Israel, reporting that there is “institutionalised discrimination” in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Beyond the case that is being made by human rights organisations, UN structures and other bodies, there is also a comparison that has been made by senior South Africans, former anti-apartheid activists and others that what the Palestinians are experiencing is akin to (and in some respects) far worse than what we black South Africans experienced in the 1980s under Apartheid. Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of Apartheid (in South Africa), in 1961 already, was one of the first high-profile South Africans to have compared racial supremacy in Apartheid South Africa to that in Israel. Verwoed did not mince his words: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”. However it was really Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu who, in 1987 and then again in 2002, began to make the serious case as to why Israel is guilty of practicing racism against the indigenous Palestinian people. Tutu, in a paper delivered at a conference of Palestinian Christians said: “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at [Israeli] checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

Since then there have been several senior –and more appropriate, than Verword– South Africans, all veterans of our liberation struggle, who have compared Apartheid South Africa to current-day Israel, including: personal friend and fellow prisoner to Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada; Rivonia Trialist, Denis Goldberg; anti-apartheid icon, Kader Asmal; former South African Minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils; Current Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande; and, Winnie Mandela. Most recently, the African National Congress (ANC) Chairperson, Baleka Mbete, at the ANC’s 2012 International Solidarity Conference, also shared this position. And, our own South African Deputy President, Kgalema Mothlante, has gone even further in stating that: “the current situation for Palestinians…[under Israel] is worse than conditions were for Blacks under the Apartheid regime”. The South African Government itself has on two separate occasions (statement 1[8], statement 2[9]) condemned Israeli practices that are reminiscent of “Apartheid”.

ISRAELI XENOPHOBIA AGAINST AFRICANS:

“The ANC abhors the recent Israeli state-sponsored xenophobic attacks and deportation of Africans and request that this matter should be escalated to the African Union”African National Congress, Resolution 35 (j), Mangaung, 2012

As was widely reported, in June last year Israeli anti-African protests turned into full-fledged race riots . The Israeli racism and xenophobia against Africans[10] is shared and even encouraged by Israeli politicians including the Israeli Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said: “If we don’t stop their [African immigrants’] entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence…and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity”. Israel’s Minister of Interior, Eli Yishai, has said that African immigrants “think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man!” And the Israeli parliamentarian, Miri Regev, has publicly compared Sudanese people to “a cancer”.

Late last year, Israeli officials initially denied but then in January this year admitted that Ethiopian women immigrating to Israel are coerced into taking long-term contraceptive shots[11]. Israeli activists together with human rights activists around the world condemned the practice as another form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia that Israel practices against Africans.

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL (BDS):

“The abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance. For me it means declaring my intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine, but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their governments racist and colonial policies, by joining a campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, until it satisfies three basic human rights demanded in international law.”Roger Waters, Pink Floyd

Israeli racism, toward indigenous Palestinians and Africans, is not a question, or matter of opinion, it is a fact. The question, then, is how does one respond. What is to be done? How do peace-loving peoples of the world not be complicit in Israeli racism and, for some of us, how do we contribute to supporting the oppressed (and their allies from within the oppressive society)?

In 2005, inspired by the successful boycott and isolation of Apartheid South Africa, Palestinians — after having engaged for years in mass protests, popular uprisings, the armed struggle as well as a seemingly endless negotiation process — called on the international community to play a decisive role in their struggle for self-determination and an end to Israel’s Apartheid policies. Palestinians called on global civil society, artists and multi national corporations to impose a program of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The Palestinians laid out three demands that Israel needs to respect for the boycott to be called-off. Firstly, an end to the illegal Israeli Occupation. Secondly, allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. And, thirdly, for Israel to ensure full equality for Palestinian citizens living inside Israel. The three demands – all based in international law and numerous UN resolutions – ward off fears (or false-accusations) that the BDS campaign is a malicious, blunt and punitive one which is out to punish Israelis. Its not; the BDS campaign is a practical, non-violent, goal-orientated and focused campaign that is uncompromisingly entrenched in international law and human rights – also, one that is increasingly supported by (progressive) Israelis themselves!

Just some of the artists and intellectuals who have publicly lent their support and respected the boycott include: award-winning musician, Stevie Wonder; Jazz artist, Cassandra Wilson; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd; musician, Elvis Costello, author, Alice Walker; intellectual, Stephen Hawking and most recently, the film director, Mira Nair.

We hope that you too, will join this list of artists. We, as South Africans, expected this from the international community in the 1980s and the Palestinians now expect this from us – to support their boycott and not cross the picket line.

NOT ENTERTAINING APARTHEID:

“While human beings are being wilfully denied not just their rights but their needs for their children and grandparents and themselves, I feel deeply that I should not be sending even tacit signals [to Israel] that this is either ‘normal’ or ‘ok’. It’s neither and I cannot support it.”Maxi Jazz of Faithless on why his band cancelled on Israel

We understand how difficult it would be for you to reject an opportunity to share your music with others. People like you are the reason other artists want to exist. Your music motivates beyond concert stages, penetrating into the intimate personal spaces of individual human lives and transforming them forever, the way only true art can. Unhappily, matters are not so simple in this context (just as how they were never simple during apartheid in South Africa). Art does not simply take place in a vacuum. The belief that cultural activities are “apolitical” (or that one is simply performing music, not getting involved in politics) is a myth. Performing in Israel will be a slap in the face of Palestinians but it will also be tacit support for the Israeli regime and its practices of apartheid.

One might wonder what purpose refusing to perform in Israel might serve? As a people whose parents and grandparents suffered under (and resisted) Apartheid in South Africa, our history is testament to the value and legitimacy that the international boycott had in bringing an end to the Apartheid regime in our country. When artists and sportspeople began refusing to perform in Apartheid South Africa, the world’s eyes turned to the injustices that were happening here. This then created a wave of pressure, which ultimately contributed to a free, democratic and non-racial South Africa. The same is not only possible for Palestine-Israel, but also inevitable. The question is: On which side of history does one want to be? Performing in Apartheid South Africa — in violation of what us oppressed black South Africans and our white allies asked for — during the 1980s was to be on the wrong side of history. Today, performing in Israel — in violation of what the oppressed Palestinians and their progress Israeli allies have asked for — is choosing to be on the wrong side of history. We hope that you will choose to be on the right side of history and not entertain Apartheid.

IN CONCLUSION:

“The issue of a principled commitment to justice lies at the heart of responses to the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is the absence of such a commitment that enables many to turn a blind eye to it…. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu

We have penned this letter a mere few days before your performance. Perhaps, we should have written earlier, however, we do trust that you have read the several letters already sent to you as well as engaged with those that have tried making contact with yourself and your management.

We hope to make this letter available to media that have contacted us as well as several of your South African and international fans who made inquiries with us, particularly with your performance in Johannesburg recently for our beloved Madiba. We hope that we will receive a response before then as we would love to communicate to your fans and others here in South Africa of your decision. We look forward to hearing from you, that is, hearing the good news that you will not be entertaining (Israeli) Apartheid.

With hope,

Professor Farid Esack
Head of Religion Studies at the University of Johannesburg and Chair of BDS South Africa’s Management Board

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL in SOUTH AFRICA (BDS SOUTH AFRICA)
Office 915 | 9th Floor | Khotso House | 62 Marshall Street | Johannesburg
PO Box 2318 | Houghton | 2041 | Johannesburg
T: +27 (0) 11 492 2414 | F: +27 (0) 86 650 4836
W: www.bdssouthafrica.com | E:
www.facebook.com/bdssouthafrica | www.twitter.com/bdssouthafrica

BDS South Africa is a registered Non-Profit Organization. NPO NUMBER: 084 306 NPO
BDS South Africa is a registered Public Benefit Organisation with Section 18A status. PBO NUMBER: 930 037 446

1. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/israeli-bypass-roads-separate-but-unequal.html
2. http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/palestinians-after-montgomery.html
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/not-all-israeli-citizens-are-equal.html?_r=1&
4. http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/guest-writers/3825-the-multiple-strands-of-racism
5. http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/12/18/israelwest-bank-separate-and-unequal
6. http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa/south-africa-session-%E2%80%94-full-findings/cape-town-session-summary-of-findings
7. http://electronicintifada.net/content/un-body-appalled-israels-racial-segregation-policies/11065
8. http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2009/09112415151001.htm
9. http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/2010/isra0422.html
10. http://www.davidsheen.com/racism/
11. http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/contraceptive-injections-ethiopian.html

Robin D.G. Kelley : Empire State of Mind

Alicia Keys disrespects the Palestinian-led boycott “half of y’all won’t make it”

–Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, “Empire State of Mind”

In the face of creeping disfranchisement, unbridled corporate power, growing poverty, an expanding police state, 2.3 million people in cages, vigilantes and cops taking our children’s lives, a presidential policy of assassination-by-drone, global environmental disaster, attacks on reproductive rights, a war on trade unions, a tidal wave of foreclosures, and entrenched racism camouflaged beneath a post-racial myth, why do we care if Harry Belafonte and Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter have “beef”? Do social movements need Mr. Carter’s money or power or influence? Is justice a matter of charity or wealth? So what if Carter believes—as he retorted in response to Belafonte’s skewering of navel-gazing black celebrities—“my presence is charity”?

Let me say at the outset that I am not interested in spats between celebrities or on expending precious energy on conflict-resolution for the Negro one-percent. Anyone familiar with the dictionary definition of “charity” will find the statement ridiculous, just as anyone familiar with Jay-Z’s philanthropic work will wonder why he would say such a thing. He has been a high-profile giver: he and his mother started the John Carter Foundation ten years ago to help fund college-bound at-risk youth; he tossed a million dollars into the Red Cross’s coffers after Hurricane Katrina; he is a partner in the Global Citizen Tickets Initiative—the brainchild of the Global Poverty Project meant to hip pop music fans to world poverty and compel them to act (via sharing on social media, writing elected officials, donating money) while dropping big bucks on concert tickets. And there was “The Diary of Jay-Z: Water For Life,” the 2006 MTV documentary that raised awareness of Africa’s water crisis. Carter met with policy makers, advocates, and poor, water-starved families in Angola and South Africa, and committed to building 1,000 clean water pumps in Africa. Two years later, the United Nations honored his work with a special humanitarian award.

Does this mean Belafonte was wrong? Or Jay misspoke? Or that we need to place ‘Hova’s’ philanthropy and activism on a ledger against Bruce Springsteen’s, the celebrity Belafonte deemed more socially responsible? What does any of this do to advance a truly progressive agenda?

Focusing on the personal obscures what is really at stake: ideas, ideology, the nature of change, the realities of power, and the evisceration of our critical faculties under the veil of corporate celebrity culture. I use corporate here not as an epithet but as an expression of the structural dimensions of how celebrity is made and its ideological function. Celebrities endorse products; like any commodity, they have become “brands.” They may say and do very nice, uplifting, philanthropic things, but rarely do celebrities stand against the policies and ideas of neoliberalism and U. S. Empire. More often than not, they embody the ideology of neoliberalism (valuing wealth, free markets, privatization over human needs) and Empire (U.S. military and economic dominance over the world).

Words and deeds of high-profile individuals do matter, but too often we pay attention to the wrong words and the wrong deeds. Returning to Mr. Carter’s reply, it is what he says immediately after his charity line that should concern us. Applying his claim—that greatness alone is in-and-of itself a magnanimous gift—to the President, he adds: “Whether [Obama] does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation, and outside of America is enough. Just being who he is. You’re the first black president. If he speaks on any issue or anything he should be left alone.”

That Mr. Carter believes this is less important than the fact that his “brand” promotes it, and I’d venture to say that most African-Americans fundamentally accept its logic. The mere fact that Obama is the first black president, so the argument goes, should grant him immunity from criticism. The relentless attacks on Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, and others for their relentless critique of the Obama administration conform to this logic. Rather than address their specific criticisms on their own terms, detractors dismiss West and Smiley by repeating the well-worn claim that they are motivated by personal slights or potential monetary gain, blame an intransigent right-wing Congress for Obama’s worst policies (foreign and domestic), respond to criticisms with a laundry list of accomplishments, or simply assert that critics of the president are “haters,” race traitors, who fail to appreciate the historic significance of a black man in the White House.

The idea that the President transcends all worldly criticism corresponds with a different sort of “Empire State of Mind.” Empires dating back to Egypt, Rome, Ancient China and Japan have depended on an “imperial cult,” the notion that an emperor is to be worshipped as a messiah or a demigod. Even modern empires, like the U.S., often fall back on hero worship, adoration of strength and might over the rule of law and justice. This is why cops and soldiers are “heroes” and dissenters and the civil disobedient are troublemakers or enemies of the state. The cult of Obama has the added dimension of being the tale of a singular black man overcoming historic obstacles, breaking the color line and achieving the highest office in the land. Such representation masks the fact that it wasn’t his achievements but our achievements, our tireless mobilization on his behalf, the work of nameless millions who elected him to office to serve the people. We have an obligation in a democracy to hold government accountable to the rule of law (that includes international law) and to protect the interests of the whole of the people.

And what about deeds? I find it remarkable that Jay-Z’s four little words could set off global outrage, but revelations that Rocawear, the Hip Hop apparel company he co-founded with producer Damon Dash, employed sweatshop labor barely registered a blip in the black blogosphere. Ten years ago, anti-sweatshop activists revealed that Rocawear, along with Sean Combs’s “Sean John” label, contracted with Southeast Textiles International S. A. (SETISA) in Choloma, Honduras, to manufacture their very expensive clothing lines. SETISA sewers earned between 75 and 98 cents an hour, worked 11 to 12 hour shifts with no overtime, and had excessive production goals (T-shirt makers, for example, had to complete a little over 18 shirts per hour, and they could not leave until they met their quota). Talking was prohibited. Permission from a supervisor was required for bathroom breaks. Drinking water (found to be contaminated with fecal matter) was rationed. All employees were subjected to body searches, and female employees were required to take pregnancy tests. Those who attempted to unionize were fired. After refuting reports, Combs was ultimately pressured into making some improvements in factory conditions, but Carter had little to say and never issued a public apology. In 2007, Carter sold the rights to Rocawear to Iconix Brand Group for the princely sum of $204 million, while retaining his stake in the company and overseeing marketing, licensing, and product development.

If we praise celebrities for wealth accumulation, then Rocawear is an unmitigated success. Jay-Z has done what most successful entrepreneurs do in the age of neoliberalism—seized upon the massively oppressive labor conditions produced by free trade policies, the creation of U.S.-backed free trade zones, deregulation, and the weakening of international labor standards.

And why not? Capitalists want to “live life colossal.” Milton Friedman Baby! Then again, who wants to tweet that their favorite celebrity made millions off of sweated labor, thereby perpetuating global poverty? Knowing fans tend to look the other way; the vast majority of acolytes are kept blissfully ignorant by the corporate image machine.

Enter MTV and the release of “The Diary of Jay-Z: Water For Life,” following on the heels of Rocawear’s sweatshop revelations. I doubt it was a cynical ploy to defuse the controversy, mainly because for the Jay-Z consumer there was no controversy. His brand escaped pretty much unscathed. And yet, while Carter’s concern for the 1.2 billion people without access to clean water is genuine, the film’s explanation of the crisis is problematic. “Water for Life” blames civil war and the disruptions of military violence, urbanization, and poverty, and suggests that philanthropy and visionary entrepreneurs can solve the problem by providing clean water pumps and digging wells. How so many Africans became “poor” in the first place, the legacy of colonialism, not to mention water privatization, don’t really figure in the story. When asked about privatization at a U.N. press conference upon the film’s release, Carter appeared oblivious: “that’s just bureaucracy, I don’t have any expertise in that.” He didn’t know if water was being privatized, but he did notice that in the houses he visited, the families “paid fifty cents a bucket for [water].” He then went on to praise his long-time sponsor Coca-Cola for providing money for play pumps in Southern Africa (small manual merry-go-rounds that pump water as children play). At the time, Coke was targeted by protestors in India and Colombia for depleting scarce local water sources for its bottling plants, and releasing toxic waste water into the ground, damaging farm land and leaving residents with a variety of skin and stomach ailments.

To be clear, I am in no way criticizing Shawn Carter for lacking a sophisticated critique of the ravages of privatization. To expect as much is unfair, unrealistic, and beside the point. Most Americans share his view; neoliberal logic normalizing Empire and its exploitative practices is today’s common sense. However, it is the use of his brand to sell this new common sense, to promote corporate interests and obscure the real sources of inequality, that matter.

Alicia Keys – Home Wrecker?

Ironically, it has been the Alicia Keys brand–the angelic half of the Empire State duo—that has shown a particularly egregious disregard for human rights. On July 4th of this year, Keys performed in Tel Aviv, Israel, in spite of urgent pleas by Palestinian and Israeli activists, human rights advocates, and nearly 16,000 petitioners from around the world, to respect the global boycott of Israel for its illegal occupation of the West Bank and apartheid policies toward Palestinians. Personal appeals from writer Alice Walker and Archbishop Desmond Tutu did nothing to dissuade Keys or her handlers from accepting the invitation. In response, she issued the following statement: “I look forward to my first visit to Israel. Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show.”

The statement is as ridiculous and ingenuous as “My presence is charity.” How can music unify an audience when policies of occupation and apartheid exclude the vast majority of Palestinians? What good are homilies about love and peace in a land where Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are prohibited from even entering Israel, contained by a massive concrete wall, economically starved, and living under military occupation? Where thousands of Palestinians are locked away in Israeli prisons—including hundreds of minors convicted of throwing rocks at tanks and well-armed soldiers and settlers? Where Israel continues to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank, displacing Palestinians, demolishing their homes, uprooting their olive trees—all in violation of international law. Where, on more than one occasion, Palestinian mothers were forced to give birth on the side of the road or watch their severely ill children die in their arms for want of emergency care because they were held up at an Israeli checkpoint. Where the apartheid wall has turned a fifteen-minute walk to school into a two-hour ordeal for thousands of young children. For young Palestinians living in Israel who are not incarcerated, few could afford the $62.00 ticket to hear Keys. Nearly half of all Palestinians in Israel live in poverty. Most are legally excluded from residing in non-Arab communities based on their “social unsuitability,” attend severely underfunded schools, and are denied government employment.

The point of the non-violent global boycott, of course, is to apply economic pressure on Israel to change these policies: to end the occupation, dismantle the “apartheid” wall which violates international law; recognize the fundamental rights of all Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel and other non-Jews for full equality, and grant the right to return, as stipulated by United Nations resolution 194. The boycott is an act of tough love to achieve justice through peaceful means. Alicia Keys’ concert, on the other hand, served to legitimize and normalize Israeli policies of violence, occupation, incarceration, segregation, and settlement. Keys and her handlers knew this, as they were inundated with materials from organizations supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS)–including the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Boycott from Within. Activists hoped that Keys’ role as lead supporter of “Keep a Child Alive,” an NGO dedicated to helping HIV-infected children in Africa and India, would make her more sensitive to the lives of Palestinian children. The organization’s Chief Executive Officer, Peter Twyman, and co-founder Leigh Blake received pages upon pages of material documenting the daily abuses of children at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers.

Rifat Kassis of Defence for Children International Palestine, and Shatha Odeh of the Health Work Committees, submitted a powerful letter appealing to Keys to cancel, outlining in devastating detail how the occupation and Israeli policies have affected Palestinian children. They reveal that since 2003, some 8,000 Palestinian children as young as 12 have been arrested, interrogated (often without access to parents and legal counsel), and detained by the Israeli army and prosecuted in military courts—some held in solitary confinement. (With a 98% conviction rate, it is no surprise that confessions obtained by coercion are rarely thrown out by military judges.) They discuss how military checkpoints and the apartheid wall have become barriers to basic and emergency medical care. And they point out that the blockade of Gaza “is the single greatest contributor to the endemic and long-lasting poverty, deterioration of health care, infant mortality, disease, chronic malnutrition and preventable deaths of children. Palestinian children in Gaza lack access to clean water, health care and are scarred by repeated Israeli military offensives and the constant fear of impending attacks.”

Keys’s decision to perform was made not out of ignorance or an abiding love for Israel or a personal mission to jump-start the peace process. It was about getting paid. The Alicia Keys brand stood to lose financially and likely feared retaliation from pro-Zionist forces. Indeed, her decision to violate the boycott earned her kudos from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies, who in turn placed a flurry of publicity pieces praising her “courage” in the face of BDS “bullies.” But as with Shawn Carter, I don’t blame Keys personally, nor do I question her humanitarian commitments. Alicia Keys is a corporate entity driven by profits and propelled by shareholders (backers and fans). Just as Jay-Z lovers ignored Rocawear’s callous use of sweated labor, Keys’s followers have quietly supported her Israel foray. The sad truth is that 16,000 signatures is nothing against the Keys-AIPAC alliance, and most Americans see Palestine through the official lens of the Israeli government and U.S. policy.

Had Keys paid a visit to Atta Muhammad Atta Sabah, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot by an Israeli soldier in Jalazoun refugee camp in the West Bank just six weeks prior to her concert, perhaps she might have changed her mind. She would have met a small, bright-eyed boy paralyzed from the waist down with holes in his liver, lungs, pancreas and spleen, and angry parents resigned to the reality that their son will never see justice. He was shot while attempting to retrieve his school bag. What if she had driven to Southern Israel to the Naqab desert and met a few of the 40,000 Bedouin whom the government plans to forcibly remove from their ancestral homeland to make way for Jewish settlements? And what if she decided to spend a few days in the West Bank after her Tel Aviv performance, meeting and playing for kids in Ramallah, Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, touring the refugee camps, listening to their stories? She might have been passing through Hebron on July 9th, the day Israeli soldiers detained five-year-old Wadi’ Maswadeh for allegedly throwing a stone at a settler’s car. When Wadi’s father, Karam, complained about the arrest and treatment of his son, he was handcuffed and blindfolded and taken, along with his terrified, crying son, to the Palestinian Authority police. They were both eventually released.

Keys never met Atta Muhammad Atta Sabah or Wadi’ Maswadeh or any of the Palestinian children growing up in a world of refugee camps, home demolitions, settler and military violence, displacement, economic deprivation, and educational policies designed to literally deny their existence. The Keys brand could ill afford to expose their star to such “negativity,” lest she walk away from the machine. But here is the real tragedy: the Keys machine was never compelled to apologize or even mildly acknowledge that something is rotten in the state of Israel.

The sad truth is that Keys’s romantic involvement with producer Swizz Beatz, apparently while he was still married, was considered infinitely more scandalous than playing Tel Aviv. Twitter and Facebook and gossip columns were abuzz with accusations that Alicia Keys is a home wrecker. By contrast, neither her fan base nor the Alicia Keys “haters” had much to say about the wrecking of Palestinian homes. (This year alone, Israel announced plans to build another 2,000+ settlement houses in the West Bank.) Equally disheartening is the Black Entertainment Television (BET) poll that 59% of its on-line readers support Keys’s decision to violate the boycott. Of course, it is likely that AIPAC operatives posing as BET on-line readers skewed the results, but not by much. Most African-Americans simply don’t know a lot about Palestine, and many devout Christians among us tend to buy the argument that defending the State of Israel is tantamount to defending the Holy Land. Few vocal critics of New York’s “stop and frisk” policy, for example, know that the Israeli military version of “stop and frisk” in the West Bank means entering Palestinian homes in the middle of the night, forcing families out of bed, photographing all the boys and young men and taking their information. These routine acts are not part of ongoing investigations or require probable cause, but an official policy of surveillance and intimidation. Such outrageous policies should have generated some 1.6 million signatures rather than 16,000.

Let me repeat: I am not arguing that Jay-Z or Alicia Keys or any corporate mega-star is personally responsible for the kind of political and ethical blinders endemic to what has become a national corporate consciousness, an Empire State of Mind. Corporate celebrities, or rather their brands, are merely the messengers. The responsibility for shedding those blinders and developing an informed, global, ethical critique of materialism, militarism, exploitation and dispossession, rests with us. The absence of a broad-based, progressive black movement has not only opened the floodgates for the spread of neoliberalism as the new common sense, but it has severely hampered the ability of too many African Americans to think critically and globally about oppression and inequality—though, to be sure, this problem is not unique to the black community. Our romance with corporate celebrity culture merely fuels a persistent belief that the black one percent are our natural allies, our role models, our hope for the future. Many of us embrace black millionaires and billionaires—the P-Diddy’s, Russell Simmons’s, Jay-Z’s, and Oprah’s of the world—as embodiments of “our” wealth, without ever questioning the source of their wealth, the limits of philanthropy, or the persistence of poverty among the remaining 99%.

In the end, the difference between, say, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, and Alice Walker and the Jay-Zs and Alicia Keys of the world is not generational. It is not a simple-minded division between Old School Civil Rights and the Hip Hop Generation. Before Belafonte, Glover, and Walker became “celebrities,” they were activists first. They joined social movements and risked their bodies and futures before they even had careers. And in this respect, they have more in common with Hip Hop artists/activists such as Yasiin Bey, Talib Kweli, Boots Riley, Rebel Diaz, Chuck D, Rosa Clemente, Immortal Technique, Twice Thou, Lupe Fiasco, Keny Arkana, and others. Their movement work was never about achieving wealth or success, but a commitment to fighting for a world where power rests with the people, not an oligarchy; a world where oppression, exploitation, dispossession, and caging of all people—irrespective of color, gender, nationality, sexual identity—is a thing of the past; a world where such corporate-backed philanthropy is unnecessary, and one need not buy high-priced concert tickets to fight oppression.

Robin D. G. Kelley, who teaches at UCLA, is the author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009) and most recently Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012).

(Republished with permission)

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