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Ten Groups Tell Amnesty International: Entertaining Apartheid Israel Deserves No Amnesty!
Amnesty International USA will serve as sponsor of a new fund that will whitewash the money raised at Cohen’s concert in Israel by using it to finance programs for “peace.” Being one of the world’s strongest proponents of human rights and international law, you shall thus be subverting a non-violent, effective effort by Palestinian and international civil society to end Israel's violations of international law and human rights principles. We call on you to be true to your values and immediately withdraw support for Leonard Cohen’s ill-conceived concert in Israel.
Entertaining Apartheid Israel Deserves No Amnesty!
Open Letter to Amnesty International
July 30, 2009
In May, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called on singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen to heed the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel and avoid complicity with Israel’s violations of international law by cancelling his planned September concert in Israel, particularly in view of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza earlier this year. Sadly, according to a July 28 article in the Jerusalem Post, Amnesty International USA has agreed to cooperate with Cohen in dealing with Israel on the basis of business as usual. Amnesty International USA will serve as sponsor of a new fund that will whitewash the money raised at Cohen’s concert in Israel by using it to finance programs for “peace.” Being one of the world’s strongest proponents of human rights and international law, you shall thus be subverting a non-violent, effective effort by Palestinian and international civil society to end Israel's violations of international law and human rights principles. We call on you to be true to your values and immediately withdraw support for Leonard Cohen’s ill-conceived concert in Israel.
The Jerusalem Post report indicates that Cohen and his PR staff, having been criticized for trying to normalize Israel’s occupation and apartheid, are trying to whitewash the concert in Israel by using Amnesty International USA’s good name. According to the article, “All of the net proceeds from Leonard Cohen's September 24 concert at Ramat Gan Stadium will be earmarked for a newly established fund to benefit Israeli and Palestinian organizations that are working toward conciliation,” and the fund will be “sponsored by Amnesty.” Curt Goering, the senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, told the Post, "We saw this as an exciting opportunity with potential to recognize, support and pay tribute to the Israelis and Palestinians who have been working for peace and human rights amid a difficult environment and insurmountable odds. I see our participation as complementary to what we do, even though this initiative is different from Amnesty's ongoing work."
WHY WE ARE CALLING ON AMNESTY TO WITHDRAW FROM THE PROJECT
By supporting Cohen’s concert in Israel, Amnesty International is actively undermining a particularly successful effort by Palestinian and international civil society to end Israel's occupation and other violations of international law and human rights principles. We find this position by Amnesty particularly frustrating and puzzling given your call for an arms embargo against Israel following its atrocities in Gaza earlier this year, which your organization described as constituting war crimes.
Accepting funds from the proceeds of Cohen’s concert in Israel is the equivalent of Amnesty accepting funds from a concert in Sun City in apartheid South Africa. Profits earned through violations of human rights and international law are tainted and should not be accepted by any morally consistent human rights organization, particularly when this money is intended to be used to whitewash the very violations behind those profits.
Furthermore, your Israeli partners in this venture actively hinder efforts to achieve a just peace. The Peres Center for Peace, with its multi-million dollar annual budget and fifteen million dollar building, is listed incongruously by the Jerusalem Post as both a beneficiary of the fund and a member of the new fund’s Board of Trustees. The Peres Center has been denounced by leading Palestinian civil society organizations for promoting joint Palestinian-Israeli projects that are “neither effective in bringing about reconciliation, nor desirable” and that enhance “Israeli institutional reputation and legitimacy, without restoring justice to Palestinians, in the face of continued Israeli Government violations of international law and fundamental Palestinian human rights, including breaches of the Geneva Conventions.” A columnist in Israel’s Haaretz Daily called the Peres Center patronizing and colonial, explaining that “Efforts are being made to train the Palestinian population to accept its inferiority and prepare it to survive under the arbitrary constraints imposed by Israel, to guarantee the ethnic superiority of the Jews.”
Your other indirect partner in this project, according to the Jerusalem Post, is Israel Discount Bank, a key sponsor of the Cohen concert. Who Profits, a project of Israel’s Coalition of Women for Peace, reports that Israel Discount Bank has branches in the settlements of Beitar Illit and Maale Adumim, has financed construction in the settlements of Har Homa, Beitar llit and Maale Adumim, and is a major shareholder in a factory in a settlement. Amnesty hardly needs any reminder that all Israeli colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory are not only illegal under international law but are considered war crimes in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Your intention to indirectly partner with a bank that profits from the occupation and to oversee a fund that uses some of that legally and morally stained money contradicts Amnesty’s founding principles and commitment to human rights.
The latest attempt by the Cohen team to find an alternative Palestinian fig leaf has also failed. The only Palestinian organization falsely reported in the Jerusalem Post article as being a partner in this project, the Palestinian Happy Child Center, has confirmed that it is not taking part. There is no Palestinian organization participating in this whitewash.
BACKGROUND ON THE BOYCOTT
With the international community failing to take action to stop Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people, and inspired by the international boycott movement that helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa, Palestinian civil society has launched calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, including an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Endorsed by nearly sixty Palestinian cultural and civil society organizations and inspired by the South African anti-apartheid boycotts, PACBI calls on “the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel‘s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.” These Palestinian calls have inspired a growing international boycott movement which gained added momentum following Israel’s assault on Gaza last winter.
In April, the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and over 100 Israelis called on Leonard Cohen to cancel his planned September concert in Israel. Protests against Cohen’s plans to play in Israel were then held at Cohen’s concerts in New York, Boston, Ottawa and Belfast, among other cities. Feeling the rising heat of the protests, Cohen tried to schedule a small concert in Ramallah to “balance” his concert in Israel. However, Palestinians rejected the Ramallah concert. The Palestinian group that was supposed to host the Ramallah event cancelled its invitation to Mr. Cohen after realizing the adverse effects this would have on the boycott movement, which is widely supported by Palestinians. Reflecting the general mood in Palestinian society against any claimed symmetry between the occupying power and the people under occupation, a July 12 PACBI statement explained, “Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel‘s colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel. PACBI has always rejected any attempt to ‘balance’ concerts or other artistic events in Israel--conscious acts of complicity in Israel‘s violation of international law and human rights--with token events in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
For all the above reasons, we strongly urge you to distance Amnesty International from this discredited project and its tainted money.
Signed:
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, American Jews for a Just Peace (US), Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (Israel), British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI), Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK), US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel
Cc:
-Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA
- Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director of Amnesty International USA
-Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA
- Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Amnesty International (UK) Senior Director, Campaigns
-Claudio Cordone, Amnesty International (UK) Senior Director, Research and Regional Programs
-Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International (UK) Researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
The letter with hyperlinks to sources:
http://boycottisraelnyc.org/category/nycbi/623/entertaining-apartheid-israel-deserves-no-amnesty
Open Letter to Amnesty International
July 30, 2009
In May, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called on singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen to heed the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel and avoid complicity with Israel’s violations of international law by cancelling his planned September concert in Israel, particularly in view of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza earlier this year. Sadly, according to a July 28 article in the Jerusalem Post, Amnesty International USA has agreed to cooperate with Cohen in dealing with Israel on the basis of business as usual. Amnesty International USA will serve as sponsor of a new fund that will whitewash the money raised at Cohen’s concert in Israel by using it to finance programs for “peace.” Being one of the world’s strongest proponents of human rights and international law, you shall thus be subverting a non-violent, effective effort by Palestinian and international civil society to end Israel's violations of international law and human rights principles. We call on you to be true to your values and immediately withdraw support for Leonard Cohen’s ill-conceived concert in Israel.
The Jerusalem Post report indicates that Cohen and his PR staff, having been criticized for trying to normalize Israel’s occupation and apartheid, are trying to whitewash the concert in Israel by using Amnesty International USA’s good name. According to the article, “All of the net proceeds from Leonard Cohen's September 24 concert at Ramat Gan Stadium will be earmarked for a newly established fund to benefit Israeli and Palestinian organizations that are working toward conciliation,” and the fund will be “sponsored by Amnesty.” Curt Goering, the senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, told the Post, "We saw this as an exciting opportunity with potential to recognize, support and pay tribute to the Israelis and Palestinians who have been working for peace and human rights amid a difficult environment and insurmountable odds. I see our participation as complementary to what we do, even though this initiative is different from Amnesty's ongoing work."
WHY WE ARE CALLING ON AMNESTY TO WITHDRAW FROM THE PROJECT
By supporting Cohen’s concert in Israel, Amnesty International is actively undermining a particularly successful effort by Palestinian and international civil society to end Israel's occupation and other violations of international law and human rights principles. We find this position by Amnesty particularly frustrating and puzzling given your call for an arms embargo against Israel following its atrocities in Gaza earlier this year, which your organization described as constituting war crimes.
Accepting funds from the proceeds of Cohen’s concert in Israel is the equivalent of Amnesty accepting funds from a concert in Sun City in apartheid South Africa. Profits earned through violations of human rights and international law are tainted and should not be accepted by any morally consistent human rights organization, particularly when this money is intended to be used to whitewash the very violations behind those profits.
Furthermore, your Israeli partners in this venture actively hinder efforts to achieve a just peace. The Peres Center for Peace, with its multi-million dollar annual budget and fifteen million dollar building, is listed incongruously by the Jerusalem Post as both a beneficiary of the fund and a member of the new fund’s Board of Trustees. The Peres Center has been denounced by leading Palestinian civil society organizations for promoting joint Palestinian-Israeli projects that are “neither effective in bringing about reconciliation, nor desirable” and that enhance “Israeli institutional reputation and legitimacy, without restoring justice to Palestinians, in the face of continued Israeli Government violations of international law and fundamental Palestinian human rights, including breaches of the Geneva Conventions.” A columnist in Israel’s Haaretz Daily called the Peres Center patronizing and colonial, explaining that “Efforts are being made to train the Palestinian population to accept its inferiority and prepare it to survive under the arbitrary constraints imposed by Israel, to guarantee the ethnic superiority of the Jews.”
Your other indirect partner in this project, according to the Jerusalem Post, is Israel Discount Bank, a key sponsor of the Cohen concert. Who Profits, a project of Israel’s Coalition of Women for Peace, reports that Israel Discount Bank has branches in the settlements of Beitar Illit and Maale Adumim, has financed construction in the settlements of Har Homa, Beitar llit and Maale Adumim, and is a major shareholder in a factory in a settlement. Amnesty hardly needs any reminder that all Israeli colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory are not only illegal under international law but are considered war crimes in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Your intention to indirectly partner with a bank that profits from the occupation and to oversee a fund that uses some of that legally and morally stained money contradicts Amnesty’s founding principles and commitment to human rights.
The latest attempt by the Cohen team to find an alternative Palestinian fig leaf has also failed. The only Palestinian organization falsely reported in the Jerusalem Post article as being a partner in this project, the Palestinian Happy Child Center, has confirmed that it is not taking part. There is no Palestinian organization participating in this whitewash.
BACKGROUND ON THE BOYCOTT
With the international community failing to take action to stop Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people, and inspired by the international boycott movement that helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa, Palestinian civil society has launched calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, including an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Endorsed by nearly sixty Palestinian cultural and civil society organizations and inspired by the South African anti-apartheid boycotts, PACBI calls on “the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel‘s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.” These Palestinian calls have inspired a growing international boycott movement which gained added momentum following Israel’s assault on Gaza last winter.
In April, the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and over 100 Israelis called on Leonard Cohen to cancel his planned September concert in Israel. Protests against Cohen’s plans to play in Israel were then held at Cohen’s concerts in New York, Boston, Ottawa and Belfast, among other cities. Feeling the rising heat of the protests, Cohen tried to schedule a small concert in Ramallah to “balance” his concert in Israel. However, Palestinians rejected the Ramallah concert. The Palestinian group that was supposed to host the Ramallah event cancelled its invitation to Mr. Cohen after realizing the adverse effects this would have on the boycott movement, which is widely supported by Palestinians. Reflecting the general mood in Palestinian society against any claimed symmetry between the occupying power and the people under occupation, a July 12 PACBI statement explained, “Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel‘s colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel. PACBI has always rejected any attempt to ‘balance’ concerts or other artistic events in Israel--conscious acts of complicity in Israel‘s violation of international law and human rights--with token events in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
For all the above reasons, we strongly urge you to distance Amnesty International from this discredited project and its tainted money.
Signed:
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, American Jews for a Just Peace (US), Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (Israel), British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI), Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK), US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel
Cc:
-Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA
- Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director of Amnesty International USA
-Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA
- Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Amnesty International (UK) Senior Director, Campaigns
-Claudio Cordone, Amnesty International (UK) Senior Director, Research and Regional Programs
-Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International (UK) Researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
The letter with hyperlinks to sources:
http://boycottisraelnyc.org/category/nycbi/623/entertaining-apartheid-israel-deserves-no-amnesty
For more information:
http://www.boycottisraelnyc.org
Add Your Comments
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We support the call for Amnesty International to withdraw its sponsorship of the Leonard Cohen Concert in Tel Aviv. Coming at the heals of the worst massacre in Gaza by the IDF last January, which was condemned by AI, we find it unethical that AI would support such an activity despite its 'musical' cover. We believe that all activities by and within the State of Israel are politically driven and that we can no longer detach them from reality.
Crimes cannot be camouflaged under the cover of civilized entitlement.
Amnesty International should adhere to its valued priciples and withdraw its sponsorship of this concert.
1948: Lest.We.Forget
For more information:
http://www.1948.rg.uk
Anyone who opposes Leonard Cohen's presence in Israel has never listened to his lyrics or his message. If anything, we should appeal to him to ALSO do a free concert in Palestine. The man is anti-war and pro-HUMANITY.
See his prose poem "Israel" on page 323 of "Stranger Music":
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself
> Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel and every nation chosen
> to be a nation - none of these lands are yours, all of you are thieves
> of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy. Who will say it? Will
> America say, We have stolen it, or France step down? Will Russia
> confess, or Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of
> destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition. Ishmael, who
> was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly
> treasure under you: Has mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We
> are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the
> borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless. To every
> people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a
> Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond
> the nation's sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the
> condition is dishonered, have you not noticed that the world has been
> taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from
> generation to generation without a thread. Therefore you rule over
> chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is
> still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at
> you. You decompose behind your flimsy armour, your stench alarms you,
> your panic strikes at love. The land is not yours, the land has been
> taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are
> quickly revised, and you bow down in hell beside your hired torturers,
> and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs.
> Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthems full of blood
> and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned
> the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every
> nation he has taken back. Because you are swollen with your little
> time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to
> live without G-d. because your cowardice has led you to believe that
> the victor does not limp.
> (Leonard Cohen - Book of Mercy)
See his prose poem "Israel" on page 323 of "Stranger Music":
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself
> Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel and every nation chosen
> to be a nation - none of these lands are yours, all of you are thieves
> of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy. Who will say it? Will
> America say, We have stolen it, or France step down? Will Russia
> confess, or Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of
> destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition. Ishmael, who
> was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly
> treasure under you: Has mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We
> are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the
> borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless. To every
> people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a
> Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond
> the nation's sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the
> condition is dishonered, have you not noticed that the world has been
> taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from
> generation to generation without a thread. Therefore you rule over
> chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is
> still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at
> you. You decompose behind your flimsy armour, your stench alarms you,
> your panic strikes at love. The land is not yours, the land has been
> taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are
> quickly revised, and you bow down in hell beside your hired torturers,
> and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs.
> Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthems full of blood
> and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned
> the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every
> nation he has taken back. Because you are swollen with your little
> time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to
> live without G-d. because your cowardice has led you to believe that
> the victor does not limp.
> (Leonard Cohen - Book of Mercy)
We should be calling for a boycott of Mr. Cohen, whose "singing" makes Tom Waits sound like Pavarotti.
If he's an inspiration, with his banal poetry and overrated music, then people must really be desperate.
There are plenty of creative, unknown artists who can't get a break because the music industry keeps promoting folks who pander to nostalgia and should have retired their revival act decades ago.
If he's an inspiration, with his banal poetry and overrated music, then people must really be desperate.
There are plenty of creative, unknown artists who can't get a break because the music industry keeps promoting folks who pander to nostalgia and should have retired their revival act decades ago.
I'm a frequent donor to AI. I called on them to boycott or find a different bank.
Here is how to contact AI.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/contact
Here is how to contact AI.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/contact
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