This month, Israel’s hasbaristas sprinkled the net with April Fools droppings, attempting to troll BDS human rights activists up the garden path. Despite the Isaeli propaganderists’ desperate efforts, noone was deceived.
The first trick involved singer Adele. Will she be amused to discover she has been used to promote a hoax?
Fresh from her recent Oscar success, British singer Adele has confirmed a concert in Tel Aviv this June! And not any old concert – she’ll also be sharing the stage with living legend Barbra Streisand!
Multiple Grammy Award winner Adele will be performing in Tel Aviv on June 18, two days before Barbra Streisand’s concert in Israel. But thanks to some amazing negotiations from renowned producer Shuki Weissermeister, Barbra will be joining the younger diva on stage for at least THREE songs!
Adele has revealed that her proudest moment came recently, when she recorded the theme song for the new Bond movie Skyfall, but this visit to Israel, and especially her scheduled duet with the legendary Barbra Streisand, might just top the lot!
Proud of her North London roots, and especially her love of Tottenham Hotspur (not sure we can forgive her for this…), Adele also has some Jewish ancestry that she keeps to herself, but maybe this visit to the Holy Land will bring out the head coverings and long skirts in her, who knows…
No news of tickets or prices, but as soon as we get anything, we’ll post it here.
In the meantime, here she is…
[and below the vid]
Oh, and check your calendars. We think you’ve been had. 🙂
In another shameless fabrication, Cafe Mouse Israel concocted a false story that Pearl Jam will play Israel.
Fake quotes from the band are made within the article. Pearl Jam’s management was contacted, and they replied with “Sorry, Pearl Jam does not have a Tel Aviv show scheduled.” http://cafe.mouse.co.il/topic/2881565/
Translation of fake article
Pearl Jam Announces One Show in Israel in July 2014
March 31 2013 24:00.01
We are excited to announce one special Pearl Jam live performance to take place in Tel-Aviv, Israel at the Joshua Park in July 2014. The show “Evening with Pearl Jam”, so there will not be an opening band for the performance date. The show dates is:Wed, July 16 Tel-Aviv, Israel Joshua Park
*Fall Tour dates in the US will be announced in the coming months.
Public Sale tickets:Will be open three months before the show at the local boots and ticket offices in Israel.
Public announcement:
After years of anticipation from the audience in Israel, members of Pearl Jam announced at a press conference this evening on a one date performance Joshua Park in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The band denied rumors about not reaching so far for political reasons.
Performance will be in style of an Evening with Pearl Jam so there will be no warm-up band.
The band will be accompanied by dozens of members of the stage, lighting and sound.
“It’s going to be an unforgettable performance,” said bassist Jeff Ament
“We did not believe such a small country in the Middle East, will have so much of a following,” said lead singer and frontman Eddie Vedder
Date concert set for Wednesday 07/16/201
Remember: It’s always advisable to cross-verify Israeli media reports and read articles critically, to ensure you are not misled by the apartheid regime’s propaganda.
FC Barcelona: it is time to stop normalising Israel and maintaining a policy of equidistance
between occupier and occupied in Palestine
We have heard that the President of Barcelona Football Club, Sandro Rosell and the
Vicepresident Javier Faus intend to go on a “diplomatic and commercial” mission to Israel and
Palestine on 21 and 23 February. The two executives will visit the towns of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
and Ramallah, where they will have talks with the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, and the
President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Mahmoud Abbas [1].
BDS Catalunya and the rest of the RESCOP (Solidarity Network Against the Occupation of
Palestine) [2], made up of 36 Palestine solidarity organisations across Spain, are strongly opposed
to this visit because it merely serves the interests of Israel by presenting it to the world as a “normal” country. Unfortunately the systematic breaches of international law since 1948 and the
constant unpunished violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people mean that Israel is
not a “normal” country. The military occupation, the colonisation measures and the apartheid
system imposed by Israel in Palestine since 1948, are not policies proper to a “normal” country.
Barcelona FC has traditionally maintained a “neutral” and “equidistant” position in the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict and has made an effort to maintain good relations with both Israeli and
Palestinian authorities. It has also promoted and financed joint sports activities between young
Israelis and Palestinians with the aim of contributing to “peace” and “coexistence” between the
two peoples. Inviting the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to the Barcelona football ground in September
2012 and subsequently – under popular pressure – inviting the Gaza footballer Mahmoud Sarsak
was a paradigmatic example the club’s policy of “neutrality” and “equidistance” [3]. But joint
activities between Palestinians and Israelis that ignore the fundamental rights of the Palestinian
people can only be called one thing: normalisation. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic
and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has defined normalisation in the Palestinian and Arab
context as “the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that
aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or
institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all
forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.” [4].
Through its policy towards Palestine, Barcelona football club shows that it is still trapped in the logic of the Oslo Accord of 1993 [5], which gave a strong boost to normalisation activities
between Israelis and Palestinians, especially in the 90s. But 20 years after signing these
agreements the dramatic situation in Palestine shows that, in spite of the huge quantity of money
that has been poured into them by the Western powers and Israel itself, these initiatives for
“peace” and “coexistence” have totally failed. Over the years, Palestinian society has gradually
realised that normalisation activities have only benefited Israel, since they have made it possible
for the Israeli state to go on implementing its illegal policies whilst displaying to the world the
efforts they are supposedly making to achieve “peace”. Nowadays, the immense majority of the
Palestinian people reject normalisation.
In 2005, knowing that only recognition of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people will bring
justice and peace to Palestine and inspired by the struggle against the South African apartheid
regime, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organisations launched a call for Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel [6] until it fully complies with the precepts of
international law by: 1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the
Wall; 2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;
and 3) respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194. The sports boycott against Israel is an
essential part of this international campaign for liberty, justice and equality.
This June Israel will host the European Under-21 Football Championship. In this way, the
UEFA will be rewarding a state that destroyed the Gaza football ground and assassinated four
children while playing football during the last military aggression against the Gaza Strip; a state
that arrested two footballers belonging to the Al-Amari club (Ramallah, the West Bank) in February
2012 and has kept them in prison since then under administrative detention that is to say without
presenting charges or giving them a court hearing; a state that has been preventing the free
circulation of Palestinian footballers for decades. For all of these reasons, more than 50 footballers
who play in the main world leagues have condemned holding this championship in Israel by
giving their support to a letter by Frédéric Kanouté [7]. In addition, a popular European campaign
called “Red Card Israeli Apartheid” has been launched and is gaining strength [8]. Recently, the
Palestinian authorities have added their signatures to the petition against this championship taking
place in Israel [9].
For all of the reasons that we have put forward in this letter, BDS Catalunya and the rest of the
RESCOP demand that FC Barcelona put an end to its normalisation activities and to its policy of
equidistance between the Israeli occupying power and the occupied Palestinian people. We also
urge the Club to reply to the Call made by Palestinian civil society and break off all relations
with Israeli institutions. This is the best contribution that the Club can make to a just peace in
Palestine.
BDS Catalunya
Red Solidaria Contra la Ocupación de Palestina (RESCOP)
The RESCOP is made up of the following organisations:
Acsur-Las Segovias
Asociación Al-Quds de Solidaridad con los Pueblos del Mundo Árabe (Málaga)
Asociación Andaluza por la Solidaridad y la Paz – ASPA
Asociación de Amistad Palestina-Granada «Turab»
Asociación Hispano Palestina Jerusalén (Madrid)
Asociación Pro-Derechos Humanos de Andalucía
Asociación Unadikum
BDS Catalunya
BDS Madrid
Castelló per Palestina
Comité de Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (Madrid, Asturias)
Comité de Solidaridad con los Pueblos – Interpueblos (Cantabria)
Comunidad Palestina en Canarias
Comunitat Palestina de Catalunya
Coordinadora de apoyo a Palestina (La Rioja)
Ecologistas en Acción (Confederal)
Fundación IEPALA
Fundación Mundubat
Gipuzkoako palestinaren aldeko plataforma
Izquierda Anticapitalista
Komite Internazionalistak (Euskal Herria)
MEWANDO (Euskadi)
Movimiento Solidaridad Internacional Catalunya – ISM Cataluña / Valencia
Mujeres en Zona de Conflicto – M.Z.C.
Mujeres por la Paz – Acción Solidaria con Palestina (Canarias)
Palestinarekin Elkartasuna (Euskal Herria)
Paz Ahora
Paz con Dignidad
Plataforma de Solidaridad con Palestina (Sevilla)
Plataforma Palestina Ibiza
Plataforma Solidaria con Palestina de Valladolid
Red de Jóvenes Palestinos
Red Judía Antisionista Internacional – IJAN
Sodepau
Sodepaz
Sodepaz Balamil
Taula per Palestina (Illes Balears)
Xarxa de Solidaritat amb Palestina de València
This receives too little attention in my view, and Butler’s wise remarks about academic freedom raise new questions about a political strategy that violates longstanding principles of scholarly exchange across national and political lines. I have never understood why I should embrace an undemocratic response to the Israeli state’s horrendous failure of democracy; or why an ideologically rigid, if secular, strategy is a morally appropriate counterweight to enforcing a conservative theocratic interpretation of history on the Palestinian people. I also don’t think that there is any good historical evidence that silencing intellectual, academic and cultural workers on a comprehensive basis, and preventing any exchange of ideas between the Israel and the United States, will have any effect on Israeli politics whatsoever beyond isolating progressive intellectuals in Israel. I cannot imagine it would do anything but promote further ignorance and polarization, giving the political organizations on the ground in Israel and the Occupied Territories the upper hand in fashioning information and arguments to promote their own positions.
Question: am I supposed to boycott the Israeli colleagues and friends I already have too? Or just the ones I don’t know yet? Enquiring minds want to know.
I also do not think that BDS, despite its commitment to nonviolence, adequately addresses the question of existing and past violence in the anti-colonial struggle. US intellectuals give the movement to end the occupation a pass on this too easily, in my view, betraying a romance with revolutionary politics that has a long and troubling intellectual history among American intellectuals. For example, on this page I see calls for a military embargo of Israel, but not a military embargo of the region or an embargo of arms to all militant groups in the Occupied Territories. This might lead to a discussion about why Israel and its many antagonists mutually refuse to renounce violence and negotiate; about the international arms trade that flourishes in the Middle East; and about whether BDS supports ongoing paramilitary and terrorist attacks in the region by non-Israeli forces despite its own commitment to nonviolent action.
Ali Abunimah’s response provides a concise overall view of Potter’s blog post:
One would have hoped that the “Tenured Radical” would have bothered to learn something about the BDS movement before pronouncing on it with such ill-informed gusto. There’s so much that is breathtakingly wrong with this, but I will focus on only one little example. Potter writes
Question: am I supposed to boycott the Israeli colleagues and friends I already have too? Or just the ones I don’t know yet? Enquiring minds want to know.
If she had bothered to learn about the movement or its principles, she would know that the guidelines published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (http://pacbi.org), absolutely do not call for a boycott of individuals of any nationality. It calls for a boycott of institutions.
It would take too long to refute the amateur and ad hoc arguments Potter makes, so I will simply recommend that people bamboozled by this post read Omar Barghouti’s book “BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights” (Haymarket, 2011), which addresses every one of these claims, and does much more to explain what BDS is and stands for.
I put the following to Potter:
Dear Professor Potter
I acknowledge your unfamiliarity with the substance and logic of the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions and hope you will rectify this through the excellent material which has been offered. I have a few questions for you to consider.
Would you have supported a continuance of Jim Crow in the US in order to preserve the privilege of the white majority in order to avoid ‘the question of existing and past violence in the anti-colonial struggle’? would you have instructed Martin Luther King to cease his effective civil disobedience campaign on those grounds? are you making an exception for the non-violent tactic of BDS which is also a form of civil disobedience? are Palestinians less deserving human beings who should not avail themselves of civilised persuasive protest to achieve their rights, to end the systematic crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated against them for so long?
You say, ‘protest, engage and discuss’.
Do you understand the function of dialogue in the context of co-resistance to a noxious system of tyranny, compared to a chorus of sweet yet ineffectual noises framed duplicitously as ‘peace and dialogue’ convenient to well-meaning liberals who thereby can avoid the choice to stand with the oppressed against their oppressor, and which drowns out deepening insistence for justice, rights and freedom of oppressed Palestinians? Do you understand what Martin Luther King meant when he talked of a ‘negative peace’?
Potter replied:
I think that instead of acknowledge you should be more honest and say that this is your judgement/view/position. I get it that the idea that I *could* be familiar with BDS and be skeptical of it is unimaginable to the crowd here, which has responded by calling me ignorant, racist, “liberal” (horrors!), adn whatever is worse than liberal. You have all had your say.
I answered:
Claire,
Recognising your unfamiliarity with BDS as amply demonstrated in your post and highlighted by numerous posters on this thread is a polite kindness to you. One would not like to think you had deliberately misrepresented the BDS call in bad faith.
I am hoping that you can engage with and discuss the questions I have put to you in the spirit that they were offered.
No response.
Elsewhere Potter posted:
I don’t think I am unideological, and would have clarified this had anyone asked in such a straightforward and civil way in the first 117 comments before yours. It’s that I reject the four positions that are offered, and that this debate in the comments quickly evolved into: pro/anti Palestinian; pro/anti Israel. I think the claim that the BDS academic/cultural boycott is capable of that is at best unproven, and at worst a romance about what it means to do effective political work. That said, I think it is possible to create effective transnational projects that do ethical and humanitarian work, serve as centers for discussion and exchange, and transformation, projects that evade the four political choices: there’s a summer children’s camp, for example, that has for several decades brought Israeli and Palestinian children together on neutral ground. But other, more explicitly political projects could do that too. I find the assertion that there is *nothing* outside politics both familiar and something we might want to experiment with resisting. Politics doesn’t seem to be doing very well nowadays, does it? And the idea that sanctions against Israel will be effective (Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria) I find puzzling.
I queried:
Would you accept a guest lecture at a university that was fully complicit with a war criminal genocidal state, where you knew in advance that your presentation there was going to assist and be used as whitewash by the state in order to commit and cover up further atrocities, Claire?
‘summer children’s camp, for example, that has for several decades
brought Israeli and Palestinian children together on neutral ground’
And there’s that ‘chorus of sweet yet ineffectual noises framed duplicitously as ‘peace and dialogue” to which I referred earlier, where it is imagined that under a system of apartheid and colonialism, that there is ‘neutral ground’.
Again, no response.
Potter then closed that blog post for comments.
Potter’s ‘old friend and colleague’, Dr. David Shorter, had his response published as a new blog post.
Potter posted a comment:
My principles are a commitment to free speech, freedom and democracy. I think that is perfectly clear in the post if it is read in a straightforward way. Censorship doesn’t forward that project, not even as a temporary strategy. Nor does mockery, charges of racism, vilification, or twisting my words to argue that I am forwarding a secret agenda or am too ignorant of the “facts” and cannot read/understand the document I have linked to and quoted. Peace out.
In response, I rephrased my questions, hoping again to receive a reasoned reply.
May I explore your embrace of free speech, freedom and democracy?
If you are asked by people who are not free to deny your speech requested by a state institution which intends to use your oration to demonstrate falsely that all is normal with state deprivation of liberty and democracy from those it oppresses and thereby oppress them further, which do you choose – to indulge the state and enjoy your ‘free speech’ at the expense of those who are without rights, or to respect the request for non-cooperation from those whom the state denies rights?
Is the latter option a form of boycott which you would support?
No reply.
Further down I observed in regard to the top-mentioned Potter problematic passage:
I am surprised that Potter is not owning her fallacies and assumptions which you have quoted above, Rima. Perhaps she is reconsidering her position in light of her acquainting herself with the actual substance of the cultural and academic boycott at http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate…
Briefly, here are her unsupported assumptions and fallacious understanding of the PACBI guidelines and their implementation which Potter needs to
correct:
“undemocratic response”
“ideologically rigid”
“conservative theocratic interpretation of history”
“silencing intellectual, academic and cultural workers on a comprehensive basis, and preventing any exchange of ideas etc”
“I cannot imagine etc …”
Can Potter answer her rhetorical question about boycotting individuals yet?
Why does Potter conflate non-violent BDS with violence? what is going on here in her dishonest representation?
A spatter of tweets ensued wherein I attempted to elicit a response to my ethics hypothetical.
@translator_eli yes, I found that most contradictory @TenuredRadical
Potter banned me on her blog – a first for me – and blocked me on twitter. She complained in her latest hyperbolic tirade:
‘I also want to reiterate the comments policy:
There will be no purely personal attacks, no using the comments section to tease someone else relentlessly, and no derailing the comments thread into personal hobbyhorses. Violators will be dealt with politely and swiftly. Too many people at AHA told me that they were avid readers, but never commented, because the atmosphere in the comments section is so ugly. Let’s make it a group project in 2013 to change that.
Clearly my many detractors of the last few days didn’t get the memo, although I suspect many of them wouldn’t care if they had. I promised I would put this policy in the sidebar, and now I will. Five hard-core commenters who cannot, and will not, agree to disagree have been banned.’ .
I shall leave the reader to judge whether my contributions constitute ‘hard-core’ commenting that transgressed Potter’s comments policy. Folks might also note that Potter consistently rode roughshod over her own policy.
And here I languish in what one recent commenter has identified as “Potter’s Field” ….
Readers who wish to familiarise themselves with the actual content of the academic boycott guidelines to avoid misrepresentation can do so here and may also read the excellent contributions on the two blog posts on Potter’s blog from Professor Rima Najjar, Matt Graber, Ali Abunimah, Elise Hendrick, Lisa Duggan and others here and here.
UPDATE 16/2/13
Potter’s handwringing over-dramatisation continues on Storify, where she likens being in Potter’s Field to death, falsely attributing this lurid characterisation to me. If chronicling Potter’s misrepresentations is ‘obsessive’, then how should one describe her own commentary? The lengths to which Potter has gone to obscure the fact she has avoided answering my hypothetical is extraordinary.
Israel uses all culture as propaganda and does so unashamedly. In 2005, Nissim Ben-Sheetrit of Israel’s Foreign Ministry emphasised:
“We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.”
Israeli universities are subverted in the mission to sell the apartheid state, with Haifa and Tel Aviv Universities offering courses “in hasbara for Israeli and International students respectively. Hasbara is the name Israelis give to propaganda and disinformation in defence of Israel and the Occupation.”
Further, Israel runs state-funded and organised campaigns to enlist volunteers to spread its noxious, prevaricative messages.
If they receive funding by the state, Israeli artists who play internationally are expected to be political ambassadors and must sign contracts which declare their cooperation with state marketing aims. The standard Israeli sponsorship contract states:
“The service provider [or in English, the artist] is aware that the purpose of ordering services from him is to promote the policy interests of the State of Israel via culture and art, including contributing to creating a positive image for Israel.
Yet some zionist Israeli performers are zealous supporters of the apartheid entity, and fervently offer themselves up as crude instruments of propaganda.
Idan Reichel joins ranks with the cultural boycott of Israel. English translation:
Naftaly Bennett: We love you, Idan Reichel
**
Here’s what Idan Reichel wrote in Shabat’s Yediot newspaper:
“I believe that our role as artists is to be recruited into Israeli Hasbara. This is a war on our home, and our country, and in times of war we must be recruited. Full stop.
I strengthen our soldiers hands, yes, the so-moral ones, and strengthen the IDF that no more moral army than that can be found around the world.”
**
At a time of artists and “intellectuals” who make an effort to understand “both sides” (Hamas and Israel), it is wonderful to hear the clear voice of Idan Reichel: I am in favor of Israel.
**
Dear Idan: You are not wrong. We are not from the UN. We are in favor of Israel.
We will carry on going to your shows and buying your albums (well, because you are such an amazing artist..).
Thank you.
Naftaly
**
PS – whoever wishes to may share and write “I love you Idan Reichel”, and we’ll flood facebook.
Thanks, Ronnie Barkan, for the translation above from the original hebrew.
Since Israel deliberately employs its artists and academic institutions to market its apartheid and colonialism with duplicitous propaganda designed to paper over the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the state, the case for cultural and academic boycott is strengthened accordingly.
Driven by its politicians’ malevolent rhetoric, Israel foams with fascist fervour. In the streets zionist fanatics scream for Palestinian genocide. Not one to demur from a frolic in a foreign blood bath, the saturnine imperial potentate Obama mouths the customary western obscenity about the racist zionist entity having a right to defend itself, rubberstamping its criminality in chorus with one hundred percent of the good old boys and girls in the US senate. Ashton is ‘deeply’ duplicitous as the EU turns away from Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza, a deliberate, premeditated crime against humanity which, as in November 2008, the ziocolony has orchestrated bloody mayhem to spice the lead up to its apartheid faux elections. In Australia, bipartisan prevarication oozes from the shonky Australian political shills for empire and zionism.
Fascist states refresh themselves continuously through calibrated, manufactured spectacles, to reprime the illusionist themes of sanctioned violence amd self-righteous racism, all the better to support the state’s drive for power and expansionism. To retain its expansionary, militarist, oppressive and racist nature, the ziocolony indulges in regular orgiastic, violent frenzies. Yet this sadistic, cathartic behaviour is inherently unstable and unsustainable.
Thicker than Netanyahu’s Amerikkkan accent, the putrid zionist hasbara flows through the western media, to obscure the deaths and maiming of Palestinian civilians who unlike cossetted, privileged Israelis, have no air raid shelters or early warning sirens, no Iron Dome defence system supplied by the world’s super-maniacal power. Children in Gaza are crying in fear and hurt, dying again in the arms of their parents, parents slaughtered before their children’s eyes, buildings new-built since Israel’s 2009 Cast Lead frenzy pulverised by torrents of bombs which in the urban density of Gaza take a bloody toll of innocent civilians. Israel’s vile oppression must end, with its war criminals and their western accomplices brought to justice at The Hague.
While awaiting the moral arc of governments to grind far too slowly toward justice, individuals can act = boycott apartheid Israel – conscientious attention costs nothing and adds to the growing weight of grassroots action to transform the racist, oppressive behaviour of the brutal apartheid entity. On no account buy your beloved diamonds for Christmas – you don’t know where they’ve been. Israeli diamonds are blood diamonds.
Revolución está al alcance de todos – resistir a la Bestia. Tierra y libertad!
Bombs and Lies
through shrouded sky
to a Gaza reprise
fascist drones fly
remotely contrived
for justice’s demise
at maimed childrens’ cries
chorused liberal sighs
can’t obscure genocide
in apartheid eyes
truth dies
as empire’s disguise
Israel lies
lies and lies
a Pillar of Lies
Forget the Australian Greens, overrun with white supremacism, zionism and equivocation between oppressor and oppressed. A good sign of their western colonialist infection perhaps is their use of the ‘deeply’ word, so beloved of Cashton and Rice.
The Malaysian government condemns Israel’s murderous attack on the civilian population of Gaza while “Viva Palestina Malaysia (VPM) chairman Datuk Dr Musa Mohd Nordin said the airstrike on Gaza that killed 10 Palestinians yesterday was yet another display of Israel’s contempt for international laws and its ruthless defiance of accepted norms of co-existence.”
