Group against cultural boycott of Israel in the music industry.

A group called Creative Community for Peace is fighting back against
the cultural boycott of Israel in the music industry. Made up of 30
leading music executives, talent agents and entertainment lawyers,
the CCFP includes music powerhouses who represent luminaries like
Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, Aerosmith, Jennifer Lopez and Justin
Timberlake.

 

 In recent days, artists as prominent as Elvis Costello,
Carlos Santana, Roger Waters, the alternative rock band The Pixies,
jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, have all canceled appearances in Israel in
order to boycott the Jewish state.

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), made up of
pro-Palestinian activists who push their message on Web sites and
college campuses, targets Israel with vitriol like food labels that
read "baby blood fresh Gaza," an Israeli flag overlaid with a
no-smoking symbol and the words "Boycott Apartheid Israel," and
Coca-Cola cans inscribed with the words "Killer Cola."

BDS has succeeded in some attempts already: a boycott of London's
Ahava retail store, fromIsrael's Dead Sea, and a video showing the BBC cutting off its live
broadcast of the Israel Philharmonic's performance in London last
fall.

This isn't anti-Israel stuff. It's anti-Semitic stuff. As David
Lonner of CCFP, a former William Morris agent and founder of the
Oasis Media Group, said, "That `baby blood fresh Gaza' thing? That's
not anti-Israel. That's plainly anti-Semitic. That's as vile as
anything you'd see in Nazi Germany."

The boycott extends beyond the music industry; last month Oscar
winner Emma Thompson joined with more than 30 other members of the
theater to protest the inclusion of the Tel Aviv theater troupe
Habima in a Shakespeare festival at London's Globe Theatre. And in
2009, at the Toronto International Film Festival, a group of artists
tried to stop the festival featuring films from Tel Aviv.

Some artist have defied the boycott and defended Israel's right to
hear them: among them are Lady Gaga, Elton John, Rihanna, Paul
McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Herbie Hancock and Lenny
Kravitz. Madonna is planning to debut her World Tour in Tel Aviv this
summer, and there will be appearances by the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra and Cirque du Soleil.


We'll see. But in the meantime, CCFP is determined to fight back. As
Steve Schnur, worldwide head of music for Electronic Arts (EA) video
games, put it: "Musicians that play there don't have to agree with
the current or previous policies of the Israeli government — but they
can go there and speak toward it or against it. Where else in the
Middle East can an artist do that?"


http://www.creativecommunityforpeace.com/