The Swarm

April 16, 2008

Palestinians slam Morrissey for Israel concert plans...

TDS Editors

YNet News:

This 20-year ritual feels like a long déjà vu; every summer, an announcement goes out that Morrissey, former lead singer of The Smiths and key new wave musician, is coming to Israel, and every year the Israeli audience is once again disappointed by the last-minute cancellation.

Perhaps this ritual will end this year. After long negotiations between the musician’s managers and producer Shuki Weiss, a single performance has been booked for July 29 in Tel-Aviv. The venue has yet to be determined, but the producers swear: This time it’s for real.

In an exclusive interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, Morrissey said he had never been to Israel and was very excited. He has been trying to make it here for so many years now, he noted, but his last two albums have been so successful, his tours in the US and Europe left him no time to come to Israel. As soon as he found an opening in his schedule, he jumped at the opportunity.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel: Open Letter to Morrissey:

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.


Post a comment

Previous comments include

#1 Steven Patrick Morrissey says:

hey palestine, show him the money otherwise get a grip.

#2 Guy says:

when you use children as human shields, children get killed. stop using that as any kind of excuse.

I'm an Israeli and I don't approve what my government and army is doing and I voice my opinion about it in a democratic way. There are some truths in what the Palestinians write in this letter, but there is mostly a very one-sided view of the situation and a silly attempt to legitimise artists from performing in Israel. That's stupid. While Israel does occupy territory and - in my opinion - does terrible mistakes, it is still a democracy and every voice has a right to be heard, Morrissey's included.

#3 frank says:

"show him the money or otherwise get a grip"?

So it's just about the money? I didn't expect to find that sentiment on this site, especially not in the context of this article

#4 bangpound says:

It's not Morrissey's rights that I'm concerned about. He doesn't need to perform in Israel. It's Israel who needs him to perform, because his performance props up their shaky mirage of legitimacy.

If he appears in Tel Aviv, it's not a triumph of free speech. It's a coup for hasbara. I expect that it will harm his chances of ever performing in Iran, that's for sure, and Morrissey's sizable Arab and Muslim audience will probably not forgive him.

Guy, your opinion is appreciated, but the International Criminal Court, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, numerous Israeli, Palestinian and International human rights organizations have the facts right.

#5 Sarah says:

@bangpound: agreed 100%

#6 james says:

Israel is the new south africa. oh but wait israel has been practicing "apartheid" for a long time

#7 D says:

he should give away some of the tickets to Palestinian music fans and see if If they're able to make it to the show. if not then leave

#8 The Goy with the Thorn in His Side says:

Hey Fatwah on Morrissey! Whose In!?!?!?

#9 johny maar says:

heebs like emo?

#10 Merkava says:

"This year, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment over the ruins of another country, Palestine."

Neo-Nazi historical revisionism.

There has never in history been a country called "Palestine." It also extremely ironic that the only nation in the Middle East which doesn't practice religious, gender and various other forms of cultural apartheid is the one that is the victim of these absurd lies.

---------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/g...

Eric Beauchemin explores Muslim attitudes to homosexuality through the lives of some of the gays and lesbians forced to flee to Israel.

(...)

"I fear my brother and Hamas more than the Israeli police, because if the Israelis catch me, they won't kill me. They will just arrest me. But Hamas will surely kill me."
---------

Maybe Morrissey could perform at a Gay Pride festival in "Palestine." Oh, no wait, that happens in "apartheid" Tel-Aviv next door.

#11 bangpound says:

Merkava wants to engage in horse trading when it comes to violence. He prefers Israeli violence against all Palestinians to domestic violence within a besieged Palestinian society. He wants them to subscribe to western notions of gay identity before they're allowed to be free.

#12 Abe Bird says:

I hate when Palestinian Arabs lie. And they lie again with out tickling and without ashamed! The Falsetinian ProPALganda never sleeps!

I didn't see the Palestinian Arabs nor those who reacted here denouncing the disgusting actions of sending their kids to protect their elderly terrorists or to suicide bomb themselves over innocent Jewish babied and women. This is highly despicable behave!

Arabs didn't take care for their refugees and now they blame the Jews. Why couldn't they act as the Jews did to the Jewish refugees from the Muslim countries? Now we are talking about 4th-5th generations of refugees, while the UN standard for describing a refugee is only the 1st generation! That means that the US is playing pro Muslim role and helps to keep the conflict hot and risk the whole region.

Let's hope that the only democracy in the ME, Where Arabs are equal and free (to open their mouth with lies as AhMad tibi often does), will find the proper way to hit and destroy it's enemies, at home and outside!!!!

#13 po says:

merkava
my girlfriend's father was living in a home with his family when he was a youngster. some people told them to get the F*** out. the family asked where should we go. they said anywhere other than here. now you can call it a country or you can call it whatever you want. a state of mind. but you can't call being cool. can you??? I'm sick of the jewish in israel. bringing the specter of hitler into every argument. doesn't it get tiring to use the same old BS

#14 basecamp says:

Bravo Morrissey!
It's known that Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were “drenched” in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zioninism! Palestinian terrorism is portrayed as a minor pin-prick compared to 'massive' retaliation of this 'rogue' state Israel. The support of this Nazi-Hamas is a crime:
Hamas MP Fathi Hammad said : We Used Women and Children as Human Shields! Have a look here: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1710.htm
"Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."

#15 was someone talking about morrissey? says:

"I'm sick of the jewish in israel. bringing the specter of hitler into every argumen"

Mohamed, Please...
Palestinians use that same old chesnut too:

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/w...
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,73...

Please Po, tell me about all the Palestians who, by law, have to wear a crescent? And while you're at it would love to see those trains where they're rounding people up on and taken to the gas chambers (would like to see those too).

This is typical anti-semetic claptrap. You never hear of Palestinans barking at Syria or Jordan about the parts of Palestine they have. They had been offered on numerous occaisions, their own homeland, which in typical Arab mindset the answer was 'No. All or nothing'and in some cases then turn around and work with the Nazi's to expel the Jews.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,73...

So don't get your panties all in a bunch when people in Israel invoke the Nazis when this kind of stuff happens:
http://www.teachkidspeace.org/doc1014...

#16 exMozfan says:

Israel and its supporters in the West are a disgrace.Morrissey you have become a whore. Goodbye Morrissey you have left my heart.

#17 Pär Brumark, Sweden says:

I wish I could be there. Might even change my travell plans
to be so.

#18 Stacey Elack says:

Yeah, too bad Israeli's know nothing of persecution and whole scale slaughter of their own people ever since, oh, let's say, the time the Romans killed Jesus.
I hardly think the Palestinians are in any way "innocent" of bad behavior. It seems to me, Israeli's are constantly, and have been constantly, attacked by Palestinians who think nothing of strapping bombs on their bodies and getting on buses or going to other populated areas. And that's only one example of the ugly behavior of the Palestinians.
I suppose the attitude is that they're not allowed to defend themselves. Funny, it's considered acceptable to commit acts of terrorism if it's in the name of Islam, but not acceptable if it's self defense, and you're Jewish.

#19 Leon says:

Why is Morrissey saying such things as "God bless Israel". As stated, Morrissey has written many songs about the struggles of minorities and the under-represented in society and yet appears toatally unaware or unconcerned about the troubles of the Palastinian people. I have listened to Morrissey's songs for nearly 20 years and have thought of him as someone with very human qualities who would rather live on the periferies of society than accept the status quo. I would like to think that it is his lack of knowledge on the subject rather than any support for the Zionist state.

#20 Mike says:

Jews are a minority in the Middle East.

They used to be distributed all over the area, until Arab and Persian nationalism made that impossible.

The refugees now live in Israel.

#21 khzmos says:

the hostility must stop,racim is to condumn ,and the criminals must be punished.there is a lot of massacre of children, wemen, and civilians in gasa

#22 md says:

I'm an arab and could care less if Morrissey has a concert in Israel. I'm disgusted by all arab leaders and their incapable attempts at being good leaders. They're responsible for all the horrible living conditions we're forced to live in.


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