PACBI Statement

Morrissey: Celebrating Apartheid in Tel Aviv? An Open Letter from PACBI

April 16, 2008
It is ironic that your persistent affection for outsiders and misfits has often driven you to write in their voices.

It is ironic that your persistent affection for outsiders and misfits has often driven you to write in their voices. Someone hated, rejected and violently attacked by a racist, nationalistic society has her point of view expressed in these lyrics, which you wrote:

We're old news

All's well

Say BBC scum

One child shot, but so what?

Laid my son

In a box, three feet long

And I still don't know why

A short walk home becomes a run

And I'm scared

In my own country

Singing in Tel Aviv despite the fact that more than 800 Palestinian children have been killed -- many in a willful manner -- by the Israeli occupation army and settlers in the past 7 years alone would effectively tell us, in our faces: "One Palestinian child shot, but so what?"

This year, Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment over the ruins of another country, Palestine. With the creation of this state sixty years ago, three quarters of a million Palestinians were dispossessed and uprooted from their homes and lands, condemned to a life of exile and destitution.

Israel at 60 is a state that is still denying Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights, simply because they are "non-Jews." It is still illegally occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. In the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), Israel is continuing the construction of its colonies and massive Wall in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of July 2004. It is still persistently and grossly breaching international law and infringing fundamental human rights with impunity afforded to it through munificent US and European economic, diplomatic and political support. It is still treating its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalized discrimination.

In 2006, virtually all leading Palestinian artists and cultural figures have called for an international cultural boycott of Israel [2]. To date, many leading international cultural figures, including Ken Loach and John Berger, and some artists' unions, like the Irish Aosdana, have heeded the Palestinian Call and shunned Israel, just as they boycotted apartheid South Africa.

On December 3, 2007, you said "I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic with regard to what my position is. Racism is beyond common sense and I believe it has no place in our society."

It is "absolutely clear" that your performance in Israel would betray a regrettable double standard, if not a categorical negation of those noble ideals.

* The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel - [url=http://www.PACBI.org]www.PACBI.org[/url]
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[1] [url=http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/975186.html]http://www.haaretz.com/h...

[2] [url=http://www.pacbi.org/press_releases_more.php?id=333_0_4_0_C]http://www.p...

April 16, 2008
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