Israel Hayom..
21 June '13..
Over the past few years, summer has turned into Israel's official show season. Big-name artists such as Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Elton John, Madonna, Morrissey, Depeche Mode (twice!) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name just a few, have already been here, stayed in hotels near the seashore, put a slip of paper between the stones of the Western Wall, floated in the Dead Sea, and kicked a ball around in Yarkon Park or at the Ramat Gan stadium.
But alongside the exciting reports about the arrival of this or that artist are more and more reports about artists who cancel their shows in Israel or are unwilling to perform here because of the cultural and academic boycott of Israel by pro-Palestinian and human-rights groups (renowned scientist Stephen Hawking recently canceled his appearance at the President's Conference "on the advice of Palestinian academics").
One of the only people in Israel who analyzes this complex situation, trying to understand the scope of the phenomenon and even fighting it successfully is Adam Shay, 37, a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Shay describes himself as "a policy guy with a love for culture," whose graduate studies in political philosophy concentrated on music as a tool for transforming political ideology.
The list of artists who have canceled their appearances is fairly long. In June 2010, the Pixies disappointed tens of thousands of their fans, citing "events beyond their control" when they came under pressure following the interception of the Mavi Marmara on its way to Gaza. Immediately afterward, Elvis Costello canceled two shows, saying he was unable to perform in Israel "in the current political climate." Gorillaz Sound System, the Klaxons and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who is known for his pro-Palestinian activity, also canceled their appearances.
But some artists stand up to the pressure from the anti-Israel groups. Singer Alicia Keys is due to arrive here in about a month. The anti-Israel groups called on her "not to give legitimacy to the Israeli government policies of illegal, apartheid, occupation of the homelands of the indigenous people of Palestine," as Roger Waters wrote in his open letter to her. But Keys refused, announcing that she was anticipating her first appearance in Israel.
Keys showed courage (even if that was not her intention) because artists who are vulnerable to anti-Israel pressure are sometimes attacked violently on the social networks with pressure and scare tactics. Thus it happens that behind many cancellations made "for reasons of conscience" hide frightened artists who don't understand what they have to do with these crazy people threatening them.
The choice of many artists to steer clear of such trouble causes bitter disappointment to their fans in Israel. The impresarios who are responsible for bringing the artists to Israel also suffer heavy financial loss when they back out -- and the pro-Palestinian groups happily declare victory from every available platform.
The crowd as a tool
As a person who grew up in a musical family with heightened political awareness, Shay "loves to look for politics in unexpected places such as the movies, music and theater" -- in other words, in culture.
"In the end, we live inside Israeli culture and not inside Israeli politics," he says. The cultural boycott that has been imposed on Israel for more than a decade, which gives him a stable place to examine the relationship between politics and music, has led him to work toward curing the malady of the cancellations.
According to Shay, the source of the boycott is the World Conference against Racism 2001, also known as Durban I, which took place in South Africa in the late summer of 2001 under the auspices of the U.N. It was there that the question "Is Zionism racism?" was discussed. Since the State of Israel boycotted the conference, it could not prevent those who attended it from adopting the South African model, whose working assumption was that South Africa's apartheid regime had collapsed because of a massive international boycott.
"The conclusion drawn from the conference was that the same model should be used with Israel," Shay explains. "So they decided to take several measures that would lead to an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. It took off a few years later, and the first step was an academic boycott that came, surprisingly enough, from Britain."
The meaning of an academic boycott is clear: Academics do not attend conferences and congresses held at Israeli universities, and universities abroad do not cooperate with their counterparts in Israel. They do not allow Israeli doctoral students to work there, and they do not collaborate in research. That is a blow because the academic world is built on such collaboration.
Even though the academic boycott began before the cultural one, Shay says that its success has been much more limited.
"The public tends to be skeptical of what it sees as the ivory tower," he says. "Most of us see academia as something detached, elevated above the people. It exists in a kind of closed bubble from which only a chosen few step outside. In other words, anyone who becomes a professor in a certain field doesn't go out and open a pizza shop. It's a closed, intimate circle.
"Most of what happens there doesn't necessarily trickle down. But what does affect us is our culture: the band we liked to listen to when we were teenagers, the musician whose CDs we all have -- and I'm talking about the days when we really spent money on records and on CDs -- the singer whose songs we all knew the words to.
"So after 30 years that I've loved Pink Floyd, suddenly Pink Floyd comes and tells me that Israel's an apartheid state. That hurts. Culture is relevant at the popular level, and the popular level is the masses. The masses are us, and that's the best way they have to hurt us."
Terror groups, too
The blame in this whole story belongs to the well-funded pro-Palestinian movement known as BDS -- Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The head of the movement is Omar Barghouti, one of the leaders of the academic boycott against Israel.
Barghouti got into the headlines in 2009 when he enrolled in Tel Aviv University's philosophy department where he is now, ironically enough, a doctoral student. He published a book called "The Case for Boycott," in which he writes why a cultural, academic and economic boycott is an excellent tool for applying pressure on Israel.
"It's a book of slogans," says Shay, "where he calls for BDS. The boycott, as we know it now, is being imposed by quite a few agencies under BDS's umbrella."
Q. Has the movement been successful with divestment and sanctions as well as boycotting?
"Not really, mostly because as a movement, even one as committed and interconnected as BDS, its capabilities are limited. For example, only countries can impose sanctions on other countries. No country is imposing sanctions on us at the moment. As far as divestment, that's not really happening either because there's no room for doing business on an ideological basis in the financial world. When we go to the supermarket, we want the best product at the price that makes the most sense. When all is said and done, Israel offers the product that's the best and most trustworthy, and those are the parameters that motivate the world market."
Q. Is the situation any different when it comes to the cultural boycott?
"It definitely is. Of course, there are mitigating circumstances. Still, it's hard for artists and bands to come to Israel. We're not exactly on the United States-Europe route, not even South America. We're on a different, distant continent, and it's very expensive to transport the band, the equipment and the crew here. The size of the audience here doesn't really make it worthwhile either. We're not Brazil. How many times can an artist fill a stadium? Because of that, they've moved most of the shows to Yarkon Park because it's very sad to see a half-empty stadium.
"To these two problems we add the problem of the cultural boycott, which is being imposed under the cover of morality, which is a lofty word that we're ready to accept in the context of art because many times, art is a tool of moral criticism. So it happens that a lot of things can be connected to that context and vice versa. It's also a very effective tool for external influence. For BDS, the ability to use these icons of the Israeli public against that very public is an incredible success. It's something that takes root in the minds of teenagers, for example, that the artist they like doesn't come here because Israel's a criminal, apartheid state."
Q. How does the BDS movement reach these artists at all?
"Most of the time, the intelligence is Israeli. The moment Shuki Weiss announces that Red Hot Chili Peppers is going to perform on such-and-such a date, then someone in Israel writes a short little report with all the information, sends it off to Barghouti or to the relevant office of the BDS movement in Europe, and from there it goes onto the Internet, to all the groups under the BDS umbrella. They get the message and start working."
Q. Who are these groups?
"It's written on the BDS website that the call for the boycott comes from more than 150 Palestinian NGOs. That sounds good on the surface -- something organized that comes from the grassroots. But these NGOs aren't actually mentioned anywhere. Many of them are registered as the same group, but under three different names. In other words, a single person has three different websites, each one of them a separate organization. In addition, many of them are terrorist groups in every way, such as Hamas' fundraising organization. These groups are recognized as terrorist groups in countries such as Canada, the U.S., Germany and Japan."
Shay has a good reason for mentioning terrorism.
"The situation is that the singer or the band was attacked in the virtual world by bullies, suffered actual violence and threats to their income or their lives or threats to blow up the show. Video clips were put up on YouTube calling on people to boycott the singer or band if they played in Israel," says Shay.
"It's the easiest thing to do all this on the Internet because there's no accountability. If I stand under your window and shout that I'm going to kill you, you'll call the police. But if an artist gets 600 emails saying that's going to happen to him, he can do nothing but be frightened. Artists complain of massive attacks, to the point where their websites crash, before they perform in Israel. These are well-timed attacks, coordinated among all the groups in the BDS movement, right up to the date and the hour."
Q. That sounds very aggressive.
"Yes, it is, and unfortunately very few artists have the guts to get up and say, 'I got death threats, but I'm coming anyway.' Paul McCartney did it. He went to the media and said: I got explicit death threats, but I have no intention of surrendering. I refuse to cancel my performances in Israel.
"Incidentally, when Moby was interviewed on Army Radio shortly before he performed in Israel, he said that the intensity of the attacks against him before he came to Israel made him suspect that this wasn't an objective movement that was concerned with people's welfare, but with something dark and dubious. But most artists just don't want to deal with it. It's much easier for them to release a statement that they won't be appearing in Israel 'for reasons of conscience' rather than to say their lives are being threatened and they're frightened."
Exposing the lie
Unlike the artists, Shay deals with that negative phenomenon. He doesn't just sit and study it. As a hard-core music fan, he also works to cancel the cancellations. Shay is full of stories about bands he succeeded in bringing here despite the threats and attacks of BDS.
"It started six years ago," he says. "I met an old friend of mine at a wedding, a music producer who brings bands here from abroad. I asked him whether he'd come up against manifestations of the cultural boycott, and he said he hadn't.
"A year later, he called me on the telephone to tell me that a metal band called Napalm Death, with which he'd made a deal for a show here, was about to cancel for reasons of conscience. Not many people know this, but Israel is a metal empire, and there's a large audience that loves the music and the bands, and there's a lot of demand for these shows.
"It was during Operation Cast Lead, and the band members saw that their website was being attacked and their Facebook page was being filled with calls not to perform in Israel. They started thinking about it and being persuaded. The producer, who doesn't know that much about politics or public relations, asked me to contact them and see what was going on."
Q. What did you do?
"I took a day to learn about the band. I remembered it vaguely from high school, but I felt it was important to learn their texts, their agenda. Metal bands usually have a very anti-establishment, anarchistic agenda, and I felt it was important to use their own terminology against them. I picked up the phone and called the soloist, and using reference points from their own music, I laid out our situation. It worked like magic."
Q. What convinced him?
"Their music talks a lot about a complete disconnect between the public and its leaders, and I explained that we have the same problem -- the ones who cause the rifts among us are not the common people but the political leaders. I explained that the political reality was disconnected from the popular reality. That really spoke to him. And then I got the idea to turn the show into a kind of demonstration of coexistence. I promised him we'd find a Palestinian band to warm up for them, and that's what happened: I found a punk band from Nazareth to warm up for them, and they were happy as could be."
Q. What's the effect of success like that?
"We turned an event that was almost canceled because of controversy and a boycott into one that included cooperation and messages of peace and coexistence. And then the band went back to England pleased and delighted, and told everybody that they'd visited a war zone, put themselves in harm's way and promoted peace between Israelis and Palestinians."
Things snowballed from there. Shay realized that he had a rare ability to explain Israel to bands that resisted coming here, and he contacted producers and production companies to offer his services. Some time later, he got a call from a production company that was trying to bring in a metal band from Sweden, and the soloist was threatening to cancel the appearance because she had received death threats.
"This soloist had been attacked very violently," Shay recalls. "I spoke with her, and she told me flat out that she was scared, she'd been getting death threats, people had threatened to bomb her performance. She showed me an email from a so-called fan from some settlement thanking her for supporting the Jews' sacred mission of wiping the Palestinians off the face of the earth and that he would be happy to host her and show her the death industry we were building to annihilate the Palestinians. When she read it, steam came out of her ears. She was convinced that this was the average Israeli, the kind of Israeli who was a fan of her band."
Q. How did you deal with it?
"I showed her that she was being lied to. The letter was signed by a man who claimed to be Israeli, but I found the source, and it turned out that it came from some activist in New Zealand. The moment I had his IP address, I could see a lot of BDS activity and other anti-Israel activity too. As soon as I proved to her that she'd been tricked, she realized that these people didn't care about the Palestinians' welfare and that their agenda was completely different."
Q. Where did this drive come from, to make these artists change their minds?
"The question should be: What's my goal? Is my goal to be right and convince everybody that we're not an apartheid state, or is it to have the show? As far as I'm concerned, the goal is to have the show. If the impresario loses the show, nobody will compensate him. He loses millions.
"I want to give impresarios and concert producers the tools and the ability to deal with this threat. Why is that so important? Because the culture of the State of Israel is important to me. The cultural variety that characterizes us doesn't exist anywhere else on earth, and we have to protect it and do all we can do promote it. Also, I don't want to be called an apartheid state."
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10159
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Glad to see there's someone out there doing this kind of thing.
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