Sorry BDSers. Looks like your sordid little campaign has suffered yet again. Why do you keep making claims that aren’t true, I wonder? Wouldn’t be Ahmadinejad’s influence, would it?
Archive for the 'boycotts' Category
By way of Haaretz I learn of a pledge by 150 Irish artists not to perform in Israel. Most of the signatories are nonentities whose undertaking not to perform in Israel is about as meaningful as one by me not to run for president of Azerbaijan would be.
“You never listened to a word that I said…” Thus did John Lydon, with his muezzin-like wail, kick off one of the greatest songs he ever wrote, “Public Image,” by his post-Sex Pistols group Public Image Limited (PiL to you and me.)
The Israel boycott crowd would be well advised to listen to what Lydon has to say now. And they can listen to him telling the BBC that, as far as he’s concerned, politics everywhere are terrible, not just Israel, and that he’s against all government - “I have been all my life,” he says. You may not agree with Lydon’s trenchant loathing of authority qua authority, but at least he’s morally consistent. And that logic means that the recently-reformed PiL will play in Tel Aviv, unlike Santana, Elvis Costello, The Pixies and others who bowed to the pressure of those who reserve their hatred for Israel alone, and have expressed it by sending Lydon hate mail.
Here, then, are PiL with “Public Image.” Yesher koach, Mr. Lydon.
(Via Engage)
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Move over Elvis Costello. Here’s Jennifer Lopez. And it’s not Israel where she’s declining to perform.
The Argentine singer and songwriter Diego Torres played to a packed house at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv on Monday. If you go to his Facebook page you can see him doing a bit of tourism as well. Good for you, Diego.
Why? Read about it here. As for the response, this powerful statement from the UK Board of Deputies of British Jews says it all:
Statement from Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council: Methodist Conference
30 June 2010 - This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy. The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report’s authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction. This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and as an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations, Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the Methodist Conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the Conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.
It’s not all gloom and doom in the labor movement. The International Trade Union Confederation understands all too well the toxic, antisemitic, reactionary politics underlying the campaign to boycott Israel.
At its world congress in Vancouver, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) stated its rejection of “the extremist policies of Hamas”.
And in a defiant slap to the boycott movement, the leader of Israel’s Histadrut, its umbrella trade union body, Ofer Eini, has been elected as one of ITUC’s vice presidents and given a place on its 25-member executive board.
Read more on the JC.
The Nation magazine has become the house journal of the BDS movement in America. But it wasn’t always that way. Back in 1981, The Nation published a brilliant piece of investigative journalism exposing the role of US corporations in complying with the Arab boycott; in doing so, the writers offered some vital insights into why the boycott movement is so irredeemably and wretchedly reactionary. I explain more in my latest piece for The Huffington Post.
Ron Radosh takes apart this ridiculous article by Adam Horowitz and Phillip Weiss from The Nation, which is rapidly emerging as the house journal of the BDS Movement here in America. Inter alia, Radosh notes:
In essence, in identifying the “Arab revolt” approvingly and as a precedent that informs their work today, Weiss and Horowitz are supporting a Nazi inspired terror which took place against the Jews and other Arab Palestinians who did not support the Mufti’s agenda. It’s not only chilling that American students are being subjected to distortions of American history with fallacious analogies, but also that journalists, who purport to be serious about their craft, would distort the truth about the history of boycotts and general strikes during the “Arab revolt” in Palestine.
Phillip Weiss whitewashing the allies of the Nazis? In The Nation? Surely not…
(H/T Soccer Dad.)
Most readers of this blog will not have heard of him but Charly García is an Argentine rock musician of unrivalled talent and artistic integrity. He’s been a giant on the nation’s cultural scene for more than three decades and he travelled to Israel to play two concerts this week. Never a man weighed down by brute notions of political correctness his visit represents another raised middle finger to the boycotters.
The Celtic Tiger is dead and buried and Ireland is going through an economic crisis unprecedented in seriousness in the history of the state. The banks are all bankrupt, unemployment and the budget deficit are soaring and emigration is starting to rise again. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions held a special one-day conference to address these issues today.
“It is with disgust and dismay that I find my name listed as a signer of ‘Boycott Apartheid Israel: Open Letter from US Trade Unionists.’ I demand that my name be removed immediately! Prior to seeing the letter on the Palestine Chronicle website, I had never seen such a letter or engaged in discussions about its content. I find it disrespectful that someone would attach my name to a document and circulate such a document without contact with me, or consent from me.” Leading Black trade unionist Clayola Brown discovers the fetid depths to which the boycotters will sink; more on TULIP.
(Via Gene)
In a comment on my earlier post, David Schraub asks for a link to the SAHRC ruling which found Bongani Masuku guilty of hate speech. A copy of the ruling is pasted below.
“The first thing to say is that Israel was not what I expected, at all. ” “There was a discussion about the boycott and it is clear that Palestinians don’t want it – all they want is equal pay and a living. ” Just a flavor of what you’ll read on this remarkable blog - thanks to the redoubtable TULIP and Engage for highlighting it.
