January 2017
Metallica, the buck stops here! Demand change, boycott Israel.
To James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo,
You may remember us from seven years ago [1]. We’re the citizens of Israel [2] who wrote you, asking you to consider Israel’s military occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian people, as a factor in your decision to play a concert in Israel. We write to you again with the same purpose in mind. Please heed the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which is aimed at ending Israel’s crimes [3], and do not book a concert in Israel.
You may recall, that in our last letter we talked about Israel’s 2009 bombing of the Gaza strip. Gaza, today, is still under a debilitating siege. It has undergone two more similarly devastating onslaughts in 2012 and 2014, which left many hundreds and thousands injured. Two million people, over 50% of them children, crammed into 365 square kilometres, with power outages of up to 18-22 hours a day, 95% of the water undrinkable, civilian infrastructure devastated, including hospitals, schools, places of worship, and other institutions. Over 40% are unemployed, 80% of the population rely on humanitarian aid to cover their very basic needs, including food, basic education, basic health care, shelter, blankets, mattress or cooking stoves. The UN has declared that by 2020 - within less than 4 years - Gaza will become 'unliveable' – meaning that there will effectively not be enough resources for people to survive. Israel's restrictions on movement trap the population inside, without recourse to search for better living conditions than it is providing. [4]
You probably also remember we spoke of the situation in the West Bank. As in Gaza, things aren’t looking up. In the past year's time, Israel executed over 260 Palestinians in the streets of the West Bank. Approximately 29% of them were children [5]. Mass arrests have risen to 7000 prisoners at any given time. Quadrupling the number of child prisoners to over 400, and doubling the number of prisoners held without charge, trial, or release date to an approximate 700. All Palestinian prisoners in Israel's prisons are subject to systemic ill-treatment, medical neglect, beatings, and torture [6]. House demolition has doubled since last year, including whole villages, leaving over a thousand people homeless, over half of them children [7].
Within Israel itself, Palestinian citizens are subjected to a growing system of apartheid, with 50 laws denying them basic human rights, which their fellow Jewish citizens get to enjoy [8]. Persecution of Palestinian political parties is also escalating [9] and Israeli public officials' blood libels against the Palestinian population is spreading like wildfire [10].
Lastly, Israel has denied Palestinian refugees their right to return to their homeland, in accordance to international law and resolutions [11], while continuing to seize their land, and expel people from their homes up to this day.
Lars, you once said, “I want the buck to stop here, now. I want lawmakers and laws to impose change. Nothing else will keep this world safe for my sons.” So you must be familiar with the frustrations of knowing that there are legal frameworks in place for justice and they just aren’t being followed. It’s exactly this lack of redress that has brought Palestinians to demand solidarity of each and every one of us. Join us and help pressure lawmakers and laws to impose the end of Israel’s apartheid. Please refrain from booking a show in apartheid Israel.
Sincerely,
Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within
[1]http://boycottisrael.info/content/boycott-calls-metallica-not-perform-israel
[2] http://boycottisrael.info/
[3]https://bdsmovement.net/call
[5] http://imemc.org/article/265-palestinians-slain-since-october-2015/
[6] http://www.addameer.org/statistics
[7] http://www.btselem.org/planning_and_building/statistics
[8] http://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771
[10] http://972mag.com/before-the-fires-are-out-israeli-politicians-blame-the-arabs/123341/
[11]https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/C758572B78D1CD0085256BCF0077E51A