From Israeli Citizens to Morcheeba: Please don’t take part in apartheid! Boycott Israel!

April 2018

Dear Skye Edwards and Ross Godfrey,

We are Israeli citizens, opposed to our government’s policies of oppression, occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian people [1]. Many of us are veteran human rights activists who have long worked against these policies. Our years of activism have brought us to the understanding that the most effective way to stop the apartheid system is to support the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), aimed at ending these actions [2]. We write to you to ask you to heed the call and cancel your concert in Israel.

We would like to start by saying that Tel Aviv, where you are about to perform, is used as a facade for branding Israel as a ‘cool’ and ‘cultured’ democracy, just like Sun City in South Africa under the apartheid regime [3], while actually hiding a brutal history of colonization and ethnic cleansing. A Major part of this facade involves the invitation of international artists to play in Tel Aviv, and the use of these concerts for official Israeli propaganda.

Tel Aviv sits atop the ruins of several Palestinian villages, whose inhabitants were killed or expelled during the Nakba— the ethnic cleansing that Zionist-Israeli militias committed in 1948 [4].

There is a clear link between Tel Aviv’s history and the ongoing Israeli violations of human rights and international law. In the occupied West Bank, less than an hour away from Tel Aviv, just in the past year and a half, over 380 Palestinian children, women, and men have been killed by Israel's armed forces and armed civilians, raising well-founded allegations of extrajudicial executions, by NGOs such as Amnesty International as well as global political figures [5]. A fourth of those killed were children and minors. In addition, Israel is demolishing Palestinian homes en-masse. Military raids for the mass arrests of Palestinians are a daily routine, as well as the strangulating reality of checkpoints, closures, and curfews [6].

In the besieged Gaza strip, Israel has conducted several vicious mass bombing campaigns in the past 9 years. The latest, in 2014, resulted in over 2200 Palestinians massacred under Israel's use of enormous fire-power, over 500 of them children. Eighty nine families were completely wiped out and 18,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged [7]. The fear of yet another onslaught is constant in the lives of the residents of the besieged strip, exacerbated by Israel's routine firing at Palestinian farmers and fishermen, on a daily basis, and tanks making regular incursions into farming fields[8]. Israel is depriving Palestinian children, in Gaza and elsewhere, of their childhood and of their future.

Within Israel itself, Palestinian citizens are subjected to a growing system of apartheid, with over 60 laws denying them basic human rights, which their fellow Jewish citizens get to enjoy [9]. Persecution of Palestinian political parties is also escalating [10] and Israeli public officials' blood libels against the Palestinian population are spreading wildly [11]. Furthermore, the State of Israel is committing systematic racist house demolitions of Palestinian Bedouin communities inside Israel [12].

Skye, in 1997 you took part in the ‘Perfect Day’ charity video for children in need. We would like to mention, therefore, that the rights and needs of Palestinian children and youths are of a special concern. We note that the UN Special Representative for Children had recommended adding Israel to an official list of grave offenders against children’s rights, including harassment, imprisonment, torture, sexual abuse, injury, and murder [13]. Please also note that half of the Palestinian population are in fact minors [14], millions of whom live in conditions of abject poverty, without financial or personal security [15].

Furthermore, we know that last year Morcheeba took part in the ‘Give a Home’ concert series showing solidarity with refugees. The State is responsible for the ongoing suffering of numerous refugees. The Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Nakba, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine and their descendants, are some of those trying to reach Europe by boats, fleeing the hell of the Syrian civil war or the suffering in the Gaza ghetto. These refugees cannot return to their homeland because Israel’s racist “Law of Return” does not grant them that right. Furthermore, Israel, in violation of basic international norms, is pursuing the mass expulsion of tens of thousands of African asylum seekers [16].

We therefore ask you to take the path of justice. We ask you to explicitly and openly stand against racism, occupation, and apartheid. Please cancel your concert in Apartheid Israel!

We will gladly address any questions or comments you may have.

Sincerely,

Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within

[1]http://boycottisrael.info/

[2]https://bdsmovement.net/call

[3]https://pulsemedia.org/2012/07/24/boycotting-the-white-city-good-for-tel-avivians/

[4]https://electronicintifada.net/content/jaffa-eminence-ethnic-cleansing/8088

[4]http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771

[5]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/09/israel-opt-pattern-of-unlawful-killings-reveals-shocking-disregard-for-human-life/

[6] https://www.btselem.org/jeursalem/20171231_growing_up_under_occupation

[7]http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/

[8]https://pulsemedia.org/2015/10/18/lets-talk-about-genocide-shoot-to-kill-israels-new-phase-of-genocidal-policy/