Open letter to Costello

Singer who called off Israel show no anti-Semite, just self-righteous hypocrite


Assaf Wohl
Opinion/Ynet
25 May '10

Dear Costello:

Firstly, accept my sincere apologies for being unable to refer to you as “Elvis,” for the obvious reason that you aren’t really Elvis.

Secondly, allow me to address your decision to cancel the show planned for Israel. I attempted to understand the reasons you referred to in your cancellation notice. You addressed the “humiliation of Palestinians civilians in the name of national security,” and I wonder what you meant.

Perhaps you’re referring to the roadblocks and fence we built in order to prevent suicide bombers from exploding in our buses and coffee shops. The dramatic decline in Palestinian massacres, from an average of one a day to almost nil may indeed be humiliating for them, as you noted.

Or maybe you referred to Operation Cast Lead. If that’s the case, you are in fact condemning us for deciding to put an end to eight years of rocket attacks targeting our kindergartens. If you think this is demagoguery, please go ahead and check the timers which the “humiliated” terrorists set for the rockets. They were aiming for the hours where our children head to kindergarten and to school.

Immediately after doing so, these terrorists rushed to hide being their own women and children. And why did they do so? So you, Costello, will see our response on your television screen, and proceed to express shock and suddenly call off your show in Israel – a year and a half later.

What exactly did you expect? That we’ll allow Islamic terror to butcher our citizens? We should remind you that we were not the ones to send our army thousands of kilometers away to spill blood at some remote islands near Argentina. We’re fighting for our very homes.

Related article: Elvis (yellow) Costello boycotts Israel, becomes “a silent partner in someone else’s mistake”

On this issue, Costello, you may wish to ask what British soldiers are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, and why they’re humiliating the Afghan people every day without the latter ever dispatching suicide bombers or rockets to Britain. Did you also call off your shows in England? And what about the United States? Will you continue to perform there while Guantanamo is still intact?

(Read full letter)

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