When
I heard that the internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter and
record producer Lorde was reconsidering a decision to play in Israel I
had a gut feeling that she would cancel the show. This weekend, she
did just that.
“[I]’ve received an overwhelming number of messages and letters and
have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and i
think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show,” she said
in a statement.
I believe history will look back at her decision as an important step
on the path to freedom, justice and equality in Palestine/Israel.
Palestinian rights activists were quick to
show their support. But not everyone agrees with Lorde’s decision, and a
glance at social media reveals the beginnings of the backlash that has
already begun from Israel supporters. Roseanne Barr
called Lorde a “bigot”, while others have
slammed her
for giving in to BDS “pressure” — curious language given she responded
to a letter from fans and decided to forgo what would have surely been a
lucrative concert.
If anything, the incentives were structured very heavily in favor of
her playing Tel Aviv, as they are for every artist facing the decision
to forego a lucrative opportunity. Any pressure she faced came only from
her own conscience after learning, weighing and discussing the issue
carefully. Lorde also seems to have taken into consideration the
requests of fans, like an
open letter by Jewish and Palestinian New Zealander fans of hers requesting she cancel her show, which is well worth reading.
Still, many have questioned her decision. One of her Israeli concert producers found a way to insult her in the process of
explaining
her decision, saying he was “naive to think a singer of her age could
handle the pressure.” Keep in mind, Lorde is 21, and in Israeli society,
18-year-olds are conscripted and deemed perfectly capable of handling
the responsibility of making life and death decisions while armed with
heavy machine guns frequently directed toward Palestinian children. Not
only is Lorde an adult fully capable of making her own decisions, she
made the right one and a much wiser one than some other artists who have
regrettably failed to heed the boycott call.
I believe that all artists should make the same decision Lorde did.
And it has never been more urgent for them to do so than now.
Let’s take a moment to review the context in which Lorde’s decision
took place. In the days and weeks ahead of this decision, President
Trump made his
Jerusalem declaration. The Israeli response to ensuing Palestinian protests have been typical of its brutal military occupation.
A few cases in particular are worth reflecting on. Take
the murder
of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya for example. A double amputee, Abu Thuraya had
lost both legs in an Israeli airstrike a decade prior. Last week, he was
shot by an Israeli sniper in the head while protesting inside the
encaged Gaza Strip.
It should go without saying that there is no reason whatsoever to use
lethal force against an unarmed double amputee. It should go without
saying that his murder should shock the public conscience. But it
didn’t. As per usual, the Israeli military investigation
found no wrongdoing and Israeli society didn’t even blink. Some have even claimed Abu Thuraya was
a terrorist;
a wheelchair-bound man who provided for his family by washing cars and
was known for climbing a power tower to display the Palestinian flag on
high during protests really just had it coming to him.
Next, consider
the case
of Ahed Tamimi, also developing while Lorde was weighing this decision.
Ahed, a girl of 16 from the village of Nabi Saleh, has been part of a
family that has been at the forefront of protests against the Israeli
occupation.
For years,
their village has protested the encroachment of an expanding illegal
Israeli colony onto their land and Israeli soldiers, the henchmen of
occupation,
routinely use violence
to repress the villagers on a weekly basis. Ahed has watched several of
her family members die at the hands of this violent Israeli repression
over the years and watched others get dragged away to Israeli prisons.
Last week, a video of Ahed slapping an Israeli soldier in front of
her house went viral. Shortly before that recorded moment, Israeli
soldiers had
fired
a rubber coated bullet into the face of one of her younger cousins, 14
year old Mohamed. The bullet was fired at a close enough range to
shatter Mohamed’s jaw, leaving blood pouring from his face and resulting
in emergency surgery to reconstruct his jaw and a medically induced
coma. After the video of Ahed hitting the soldiers went viral, Ahed, her
cousin and mother were arrested and are being held, for days now,
without charge.
Meanwhile, what was the response in Israeli society to video of a
girl who has lost so much putting her life on the line before a soldier,
who could take it in an instant? It was not to ask “How dare we?” but
rather “How dare she!”
Israel’s Defense Minister, a settler himself,
declared
“Everyone involved, not only the girl but also her parents and those
around them will not escape from what they deserve.” Israel’s Education
Minister Naftali Bennett, the guy responsible for educating Israel’s
children,
said this Palestinian child should spend the rest of her days in prison. This is the same Minister who
said
that an Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria, who committed cold-blooded murder
captured on video, should not serve a “single day in prison”. But that
wasn’t even the worst of it. Michael Oren, a Knesset member and former
American and Ambassador to the US
questioned
whether the Tamimis were even a real family, and focused on Ahed’s
suspicious American clothes. Apparently, Palestinians that don’t fit
neatly into the racist stereotypes in Oren’s mind must be mythical.
Judging by the words of their leaders and the press, Israelis by and
large were unable to see this moment in Nabi Saleh for what it was: an
instance of a brutal military occupation. Instead, they saw an unarmed
16 year old girl as the aggressor, and the heavily armed agent of
occupation, whose army kills and arrests her family members and
facilitates the theft of her land, as, somehow, the victim. “When I
watched that, I felt humiliated, I felt crushed,”
said
Miri Regev, an Israeli Cabinet minister and former military
spokeswoman, who called the episode “damaging to the honor of the
military and the state of Israel.” Think about that for a moment.
Israelis, with the world’s largest per capita nuclear arsenal and one of
the most capable and powerful militaries in the world that wields its
advanced planes, tanks and ships against stateless Palestinians, was
left dishonored, crushed and humiliated, not by another army but by the
empty palms of a 16 year old girl.
Things like the reactions of Israelis to Ahed Tamimi or their lack of
response to the killing of Abu Thuraya demonstrate how the Israeli
conscience, when it comes to the Palestinians it controls, has withered,
rotted and died.
And it is moments like this that demonstrate exactly why the decision Lorde made is so important and justified.
Israeli leaders argue to their people that their policies and
behavior toward the Palestinians are justified. They are aided and
abetted in this enterprise by an international community that instead of
sanctioning Israel has trade relations with them, and by a United
States which instead of holding Israel accountable for its violations,
continues to send $3.8 billion in aid year after year.
In other words, Israeli society is being told both internally and
externally that their brutal oppression of Palestinians is A-OK. If
Israelis are ever going to end their oppression of Palestinians, it
needs to start with dramatic wake up call to Israeli society, leading to
a realization that there are costs to denying freedom and equality to
millions of Palestinian human beings. Palestinian civil society has
embraced non-violent economic action in the form of BDS as tactics to
convey this message and calls for international solidarity in doing so.
Lorde’s choice to heed this call helps send
Israel the message that this situation is not normal and cannot be
normalized, and that they cannot continue to ignore the injustices that
they visit upon Palestinians. She joins a growing list of artists and
performers who have made the same decision, and many more will follow in
her footsteps.
Just as in the case of South Africa, artists have an important role
to play in the quest for peace and justice. And, just as in the case of
South Africa, some of the same arguments that defenders of Apartheid
South Africa used unsuccessfully against BDS efforts then are being
recycled today to defend Israel’s apartheid policies in the West Bank.
These efforts, too, will be unsuccessful.
One of those arguments deployed against Lorde’s decision has come
from the “Whataboutist” camp. On Twitter, opponents were quick to point
out that the singer is canceling her concert in Israel but not in
Russia, also guilty of human rights abuses, and thus her boycott efforts
and those of BDS more generally are hypocritical. This too is recycled
South African Apartheid regime propaganda. In those days, anti-boycott
advocates would
point to other countries
in Africa and Asia with poor human rights records, just as Israel
defenders engage in whataboutery today to displace responsibility for
the denial of Palestinian rights. The truth is, Apartheid South Africa
did not have the worst human rights record in history, but it was the
worst human rights abuser of native South African blacks. Likewise,
Israel may not be the worst or only human rights abuser in the world
today, but it is the worst human rights abuser of Palestinians.
Tactics like boycotts are specific to the context and are deployed
for their utility. These tactics were embraced by Palestinian civil
society, and increasingly international civil society, because the
international state system has failed to hold Israel accountable for its
violations. Unlike Russia or other states like North Korea, Myanmar or
others where the US and others have deployed economic sanctions, Israel
receives billions in weapons from Washington and receives blanket
protection at the United Nations. With that said, should an oppressed
population anywhere in the world organize a call for international
solidarity against their oppressors who are flouting international law
and have nonetheless found a way to evade any accountability from the
state system, like sanctions or arms embargoes, then cultural icons
should heed their call, just as they did for South Africans and just as
they should for Palestinians.
One day, freedom, justice and equality will finally reign for
Israelis and Palestinians alike. Then we can all sing and dance without a
backdrop of racism, discrimination and brutality. I dream of the first
concert in my homeland after freedom, when all the artists who boycotted
can finally come back and play. I look forward to seeing Lorde there as
part of a historic line up alongside Roger Waters, Lauryn Hill and
many, many more.
This freedom concert will be well worth waiting for precisely because freedom is something well worth fighting for.
Yousef Munayyer, a political analyst and writer, is Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.
