I just came across this just now, the fact that Moz has written an excellent song in the past about living under occupation ('This Is Not Your Country' - originally a B-side off 'Satan Rejected My Soul'), yet is still prepared to play in a land presently under occupation is sad.....really sad. :-(
http://refrainplayingisrael.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/morrissey-say-yes-to-human-rights-no-to.html
Morrissey: Say YES to human rights, No to apartheid Israel
Human rights advocates ask Morrissey to abandon his plans for a gig in apartheid Israel this July, in favor of human rights. Four years ago, Morrissey chose to violate the boycott call, and he plans to play Apartheid Israel for a second time on 21 July, 2012. Today, this letter to him from the PACBI is more pertinent than ever for the avowed vegan and animals rights advocate Morrissey.
Morrissey: Celebrating Apartheid in Tel Aviv? An Open Letter from PACBI
(April 16, 2008) Today, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed your video message to the Israeli public, confirming your performance in Tel Aviv on July 29, 2008 [1]. You end your message with the words "God bless Israel, stay nice!" This message and your planned Israel gig are indicators of either a serious lack of understanding of what Israel is or a conscious bias towards Israel, despite its colonial and apartheid reality. Celebrating Israel, as you plan to do, at a time when it is persistently committing war crimes and other grave breaches of international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in Gaza, is an act of complicity in maintaining Israel's illegal occupation and regime of racial dscrimination against the people of Palestine.It is ironic that your persistent affection for outsiders and misfits has often driven you to write in their voices. Someone hated, rejected and violently attacked by a racist, nationalistic society has her point of view expressed in these lyrics, which you wrote:
We're old news
All's well
Say BBC scum
One child shot, but so what?
Laid my son
In a box, three feet long
And I still don't know why
A short walk home becomes a run
And I'm scared
In my own country
Singing in Tel Aviv despite the fact that more than 800 Palestinian children have been killed -- many in a willful manner -- by the Israeli occupation army and settlers in the past 7 years alone would effectively tell us, in our faces: "One Palestinian child shot, but so what?"
This year, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment over the ruins of another country, Palestine. With the creation of this state sixty years ago, three quarters of a million Palestinians were dispossessed and uprooted from their homes and lands, condemned to a life of exile and destitution.
Israel at 60 is a state that is still denying Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights, simply because they are "non-Jews." It is still illegally occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. In the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), Israel is continuing the construction of its colonies and massive Wall in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of July 2004. It is still persistently and grossly breaching international law and infringing fundamental human rights with impunity afforded to it through munificent US and European economic, diplomatic and political support. It is still treating its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalized discrimination.
In 2006, virtually all leading Palestinian artists and cultural figures have called for an international cultural boycott of Israel [2]. To date, many leading international cultural figures, including Ken Loach and John Berger, and some artists' unions, like the Irish Aosdana, have heeded the Palestinian Call and shunned Israel, just as they boycotted apartheid South Africa.
On December 3, 2007, you said "I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic with regard to what my position is. Racism is beyond common sense and I believe it has no place in our society."
It is "absolutely clear" that your performance in Israel would betray a regrettable double standard, if not a categorical negation of those noble ideals.
* The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel - www.PACBI.org
http://refrainplayingisrael.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/morrissey-say-yes-to-human-rights-no-to.html
Morrissey: Say YES to human rights, No to apartheid Israel
Human rights advocates ask Morrissey to abandon his plans for a gig in apartheid Israel this July, in favor of human rights. Four years ago, Morrissey chose to violate the boycott call, and he plans to play Apartheid Israel for a second time on 21 July, 2012. Today, this letter to him from the PACBI is more pertinent than ever for the avowed vegan and animals rights advocate Morrissey.
Morrissey: Celebrating Apartheid in Tel Aviv? An Open Letter from PACBI
(April 16, 2008) Today, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed your video message to the Israeli public, confirming your performance in Tel Aviv on July 29, 2008 [1]. You end your message with the words "God bless Israel, stay nice!" This message and your planned Israel gig are indicators of either a serious lack of understanding of what Israel is or a conscious bias towards Israel, despite its colonial and apartheid reality. Celebrating Israel, as you plan to do, at a time when it is persistently committing war crimes and other grave breaches of international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in Gaza, is an act of complicity in maintaining Israel's illegal occupation and regime of racial dscrimination against the people of Palestine.It is ironic that your persistent affection for outsiders and misfits has often driven you to write in their voices. Someone hated, rejected and violently attacked by a racist, nationalistic society has her point of view expressed in these lyrics, which you wrote:
We're old news
All's well
Say BBC scum
One child shot, but so what?
Laid my son
In a box, three feet long
And I still don't know why
A short walk home becomes a run
And I'm scared
In my own country
Singing in Tel Aviv despite the fact that more than 800 Palestinian children have been killed -- many in a willful manner -- by the Israeli occupation army and settlers in the past 7 years alone would effectively tell us, in our faces: "One Palestinian child shot, but so what?"
This year, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment over the ruins of another country, Palestine. With the creation of this state sixty years ago, three quarters of a million Palestinians were dispossessed and uprooted from their homes and lands, condemned to a life of exile and destitution.
Israel at 60 is a state that is still denying Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights, simply because they are "non-Jews." It is still illegally occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. In the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), Israel is continuing the construction of its colonies and massive Wall in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of July 2004. It is still persistently and grossly breaching international law and infringing fundamental human rights with impunity afforded to it through munificent US and European economic, diplomatic and political support. It is still treating its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalized discrimination.
In 2006, virtually all leading Palestinian artists and cultural figures have called for an international cultural boycott of Israel [2]. To date, many leading international cultural figures, including Ken Loach and John Berger, and some artists' unions, like the Irish Aosdana, have heeded the Palestinian Call and shunned Israel, just as they boycotted apartheid South Africa.
On December 3, 2007, you said "I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic with regard to what my position is. Racism is beyond common sense and I believe it has no place in our society."
It is "absolutely clear" that your performance in Israel would betray a regrettable double standard, if not a categorical negation of those noble ideals.
* The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel - www.PACBI.org
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