October 2016
From Israeli Citizens to The Chemical Brothers: Push the button, boycott apartheid Israel!
We are Israeli citizens, opposed to the Israeli 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 long years of activism have brought us to the understanding that the most effective way to stop the apartheid system is to deny its economic fuel and political legitimacy. Therefore, we strongly 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 in solidarity with millions of oppressed people who are asking for your support.
It seems appropriate, therefore, to mention that - much like Sun City in South Africa under the apartheid regime - the city of Tel Aviv is a tool for marketing the State of Israel as a "cool" and "cultured" democracy [3], while hiding a brutal history of colonization, even that of the city itself. Tel Aviv sits atop the ruins of several Palestinian villages, whose inhabitants had been killed or expelled during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing that Zionist militias (later to become Israel's army) committed in 1948 [4].
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the Tel Aviv-Yafa story, in itself an emblem of the rest of Israel's apartheid regime. In Yafa, Israel is employing gentrification, discriminatory funding and policing, treating Palestinians as second class citizens, while following 50 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel [5]). In the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is employing no less than a belligerent military regime, employing daily, systematic lethal force.
In the West Bank, just in the past year, over 230 Palestinians 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 [6]. A fourth of those killed were children and minors. In addition, Israel is demolishing Palestinian homes en-masse (this also applies to the Palestinian Bedouin communities inside Israel). Military raids for the mass arrests of Palestinians are a daily routine, as well as the strangulating reality of checkpoints, closures, and curfews.
In the besieged Gaza strip, Israel has conducted several vicious mass bombing campaign, in the past 7 years. The latest, in 2014, resulted in over 2200 Palestinians massacred under Israel's use of enormous fire-power, over 500 of them children. 89 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]
In an interview about your album, Galvanize, you said [9]:
"[Our music] used to be about turning away from the world, but now it feels like you can't keep doing that. People are much more politicised, and rightly so. We did think very hard about whether this was the right thing to do - saying something so explicit is a big change for us - but now we're very proud of it."
We therefore ask you to once again face the world. Say something explicit against racism, occupation and apartheid, and stand against it. Please cancel your concert in Apartheid Israel!
Sincerely,
Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within
[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
[5]http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771
[7]http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/