Newsletter Archive:


  May 2011 www.pacbi.org  
 

Artists Against Apartheid launched in Australia

As Artists aware of our colonial history, we recognise the dispossession of the Indigenous people of this Land, and we support the human rights of the Indigenous people of Palestine to live on their land with dignity – free from military occupation and the brutality of the Israeli Apartheid system. We call on all artists in Australia to support the vital BDS movement – a direct response by world citizens to the failure of so-called international diplomacy. It is no longer possible to remain silent. To be silent is to be complicit.





Roxette and Fito Paez: Don’t Play For Apartheid!

Palestinian civil society is calling on artists to shun Tel Aviv, akin to past South African calls to boycott Sun City. PACBI asks Roxette and Fito Paez to refrain from crossing this picket line endorsed by international organizations, and increasingly supported by progressive-Israelis.


Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS) Launched

Recalling the union maxim "an injury to one is an injury to all", and given the global union movement’s solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world, PTUC-BDS is formed.



Largest student union in Europe joins boycott of Israel

The University of London Union (ULU) has voted 10-1 to institute and campaign for BDS in support of Palestine. The motion called for "thorough research into ULU investments and contracts" with companies guilty of "violating Palestinian human rights".

 



PACBI Editorial

Hiding Behind Governments: Artists Undermining the Boycott of Israel

If artists are to wait for UN policies to be formed rather than play a role in shaping them, then they forfeit their social responsibility and relegate their role to obeying government top-down decisions, rather than speaking truth to power.

When the BDS movement calls on artists and cultural workers to take a position so that this might pressure governments and the UN, the movement is essentially asking people to take a lead so that governments may follow.

Imagine if artists and musicians had waited for their governments before taking a stand in other situations of entrenched oppression; where would South African freedom be today? During the South African apartheid-era boycotts, world governments -- and to a lesser extent the UN -- were considerably slower in declaring apartheid to be a crime, and to institute comprehensive boycotts.

It was only decades after a grassroots movement had been formed, whereby many artists refused to perform for the apartheid regime, that world bodies joined the boycott call.

 
Ewam Pearson: On Not DJing in Israel

I have always turned gigs in Israel down, appalled by accounts I've read of the Occupation, the mistreatment of its Palestinian population and the blockade on Gaza.

 
Andy McKee Cancel's Concerts in Israel

If things come up that give me reason to be uncomfortable performing in a region [then] I won't be performing there until peace and acceptance are the norm.

 
Shapiro to Coen Brothers: It's Nothing Personal (It's all Political)

They did their best to be innocent, civilized, spectators in tuxes, far removed from the violence of the street. One might ask why they think crossing a picket line is the way to go?

 
 
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