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[bacasper]

Amnesty International Withdraws from Leonard Cohen�s Israel Concert Fund

New York, NY, August 18 � Amnesty International has announced today that it will abstain from any involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert in Tel Aviv and will not be party to any fund that benefits from the concert�s proceeds. A number of media accounts had reported that Amnesty International was to manage or otherwise partner in a fund created from the proceeds of Cohen�s concert in Israel that would be used to benefit Israeli and Palestinian groups. Amnesty International�s announcement today followed an international outcry over the human rights organization�s reported involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert fund, and an earlier international call for Cohen to boycott apartheid Israel.

Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) commented, �We welcome Amnesty International�s withdrawal from this ill-conceived project which is clearly intended to whitewash Israel�s violations of international law and human rights. By abandoning the Leonard Cohen project in Tel Aviv, Amnesty International has dealt Cohen and his public relations team a severe blow, denying them the cover of the organization�s prestige and respectability.�

A statement confirming Amnesty�s withdrawal has now been posted on the Amnesty International website.

After reports in late July that Amnesty International would manage a fund from the proceeds of Leonard Cohen�s concert in Israel, groups in occupied Palestine and around the world mobilized to pressure Amnesty International not to participate in such a fund. The Palestinian Non-governmental Organizations� Network (PNGO) called in an August 11th letter on Amnesty International to reject management of a fund that is to be created from the proceeds of Leonard Cohen�s planned September concert in Israel. The West Bank village of Bil�in had made a similar appeal to Amnesty International. An international campaign of about one thousand letters to Amnesty International called for Amnesty�s withdrawal from the Cohen concert initiative. The only Palestinian organization that was claimed to be a recipient of the fund had previously announced that it was not involved in the project. Additionally, a representative of the joint Palestinian Israeli group Combatants for Peace, another previously announced beneficiary of the Cohen concert fund, had informed the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel in writing that the group had decided not to participate in the Leonard Cohen concert in Tel Aviv and not to accept any funds from its proceeds.

article continues at link

[noguri]

Well, Cohen is a great poet but seemingly confused about the complex politics of Israel.

I mean, why would he think that just scheduling a concert in Ramallah would "balance" things?

However, it seems like Amnesty International is also confused. Why do they withdraw after they originally were going to support the concert? Who is yanking their string?

I guess that is what I couldn't really glean from the article--what's wrong with Cohen's concert NOW that wasn't wrong with it when Amnesty first decided to support it. Did I miss something?

The article seems to just indicate that Cohen is not joining the boycott of Israel called for and supported by large numbers of artists and performers. That could be reprehensible. Maybe he just has a different way of understanding the relationship between art and politics.

I don't think that the concert or Cohen's donation of proceeds to benefit nonprofit groups can do much to "whitewash" Israel's image. It doesn't sound like it could have been a very big public relations coup even if it had happened as it was planned. The accusation that he was trying to pull off a propaganda coup on Israel's behalf doesn't sound very convincing.

As a citizen of a country (the U.S.) that perpetrates daily murders of people in Afghanistan and Iraq just because they are Muslims (and hence seen as responsible for the 9/11 attack) I CANNOT pretend that my hands are clean whereas Israel's hands are blood-stained.

WHose hands are clean? Canadians? Koreans? Who can say that she/he is not paying taxes that buy weapons to kill children in Afghanistan?

It would be silly to say that buying a ticket to a Leonard Cohen concert is tantamount to murdering Palestinian children. In reality, it's paying taxes to Uncle Sam or paying interest on your federally issued Stafford Student Loan which is actually buying the weapons to kill children.

[Harpeau]

Man, I wish Leonard Cohen would come to Seoul!!!!!! People have had problems with Simon going to Lesotho, etc. People may have trouble with what Cohen's doing. He's an artist. Let him follow his own conscience.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[JMO]

Am I the only person who thought that Allen Iverson had some kind of problem with Cohen, after reading the title of this thread?

[bacasper]

[cwflaneur]

[bacasper]

Boycott - the Sane Response to Israeli Apartheid

Monday, 24 August 2009 16:37 Added by PT Editor Sarah Price

UK, August 24, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) - The movement to boycott Israel is becoming respectable. In Europe and America as well as in the Middle East and many parts of the developing world, people of conscience - including many Jews - are rejecting anti-Arab prejudice and Zionist mythology and seeing Israel for what it is - an ethnocentric state which deserves to be ostracised just as South Africa was ostracised during the apartheid era.

Groups like mine - Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods - support the call made by nearly 200 Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005 for a broad campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, including an institutional academic and cultural boycott, until Israel respects Palestinian human rights and abides by international law.

Four years on, reports of boycott activities are appearing in mainstream media and the internet is buzzing with film, photos and text reports of inventive, non-violent and increasingly effective campaigns. These take many different forms.

Just this week, a worldwide campaign of letter writing resulted in the human rights organisation Amnesty International withdrawing from a scheme to manage the proceeds from a concert in Israel next month by American singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Cohen has been touring the globe for many weeks now, everywhere encountering musicians, artists and other campaigners pleading with him not to ignore the Palestinian boycott call. They argue that to go ahead with a concert in Israel is to reward Israelis for the murderous assault on Gaza last winter which killed 1,500 Palestinians and devastated a community of 1.5 million. Cohen tried to persuade Amnesty to give his planned concert credibility by distributing funds to organisations he said work for reconciliation, tolerance and peace. But his argument was rejected by Palestinian groups which said the plan would only enhance Israeli legitimacy without restoring justice to Palestinians. Amnesty bowed out, but the campaign to halt Leonard Cohen's concert in Israel continues as part of the cultural boycott movement to persuade all international performers to stay away.

Artists and performers representing the Israeli state are also coming up against boycott actions when they travel abroad. Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) activists, protesting at the Israeli siege of Gaza which was in force long before the all-out military assault began in December 2008, disrupted a concert in Edinburgh last year by the Jerusalem Quartet, an Israeli musical ensemble designated �Cultural Ambassadors' of the State of Israel and �Distinguished IDF (Israeli Army) Musicians'

Five activists were arrested and are facing charges for �racially aggravated conduct'. The SPSC website http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/ said these were " trumped up charges based on the British Government's response to rising support among the public for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and the wave of anger at British complicity in Israeli crimes." They indicate official endorsement of "the tired Zionist strategy" of trying to intimidate Israel's opponents by accusing them of anti-Jewish racism, the campaign group said.

The Zionist habit of accusing Israel's critics of anti-semitism is losing its potency as more and more Jews, including some Israelis, recognise the powerful arguments for boycotting Israel. Scottish PSC has received vocal support from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), a Jewish organisation committed to justice and full recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people. IJAN gave the Scottish activists its "unwavering support" and said "we reject the false premise that a challenge to the injustice of Israeli apartheid is a �racially motivated' act targeting Jewish people."

The network said it fully endorsed such actions undertaken in support of the call from Palestinian civil society for full boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Further Jewish endorsement of the boycott movement came this week from Neve Gordon who teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Gordon said he had reluctantly concluded that calling on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel was "the only way that Israel can be saved from itself."

more at link

[TheUrbanMyth]

[samcheokguy]

It's been said the difference between Israel and NK, the Taliban, Sudan, is that such countries make no claims to being "a democracy committed to human rights." Israel DOES, and is. As long as you're Jewish. Heck the laws in Israel are terrible to Israeli Arabs. Even Christians are persecuted. The govt. of Israel is similar to the Korean mindset. "It's our turn to get even with the people who mistreated us." Sadly the Nazis are dead, so lets punish some Arab babies.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[bacasper]

An Israeli Jew's perspective:

Boycott Israel

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it's the only way to save his country.

By Neve Gordon
August 20, 2009

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis -- even peaceniks -- aren't signing on. A global boycott can't help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one's own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews -- whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel -- are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.

The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a bi-national democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.

The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.

Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, "on the ground," the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality.

opinion continues at link

What do you think? One state or two?

[Fox]

Two state solution, no division of Jerusalem, blockade is ended, Palestine is held responsible for any future terrorist attacks launched from its territority.

[samcheokguy]

Yeah. Ari Shavat goes nuts
http://www.counterpunch.org/shavit01162004.html

There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing."

-Nice words from a jew.

[TheUrbanMyth]