Dear Bono,
..... the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)was deeply disturbed to learn that that you are scheduled to perform in Israel this coming summer...... we call on you now not to grant legitimacy to a state that practices the most pernicious form of colonialism and apartheid.
Performing in Israel would violate the almost unanimously endorsed Palestinian civil society Call for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions against Israel. This Call is directed particularly towards international activists, artists, and academics of conscience, such as yourself. Moreover, it would come a year and a half after Israel’s bloody military assault against the occupied Gaza Strip which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and 5380 injured......
This criminal assault comes after three years of an ongoing, illegal, crippling Israeli siege of Gaza which has shattered all spheres of life, prompting the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Richard Falk, to describe it as “a prelude to genocide”......
In the New York Times you wrote of your hope “that the regimes in North Korea, Myanmar and elsewhere are taking note of the trouble an aroused citizenry can give to tyrants.” You went on to further elaborate on the hope that “people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi.”
Rather than shifting the blame from the violence of the colonial oppressor to the resistance of the indigenous oppressed and characterizing the Palestinians as a population filled with “rage and despair,” it is more apt to consider them among the “aroused citizenry” responding to tyranny –
As to your hope that the Palestinians will soon find their own leading figure to champion nonviolent resistance, the Palestinian civil society Call for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions against Israel is one of the largest nonviolent, morally consistent movements for ending Israel’s system of apartheid and colonial oppression. It is endorsed by a majority of Palestinian civil society. As a leading artist who is concerned about human rights, it is your moral obligation to honor this call and not to cross our "picket line."
A whole generation was affected by your musical activism... the civil rights movement in America, the everyday human heroes in El Salvador and the brave struggles in Ireland.... Entertaining apartheid Israel despite all the injustice it is committing against the Palestinians would significantly smear this great legacy of yours.
Through systematic repression and incarceration of human rights defenders without due process, Israel has made sure that those Palestinian "Gandhis" and "Kings" do not rise to prominence. Activists such as Mohammed Othman, Abdallah Abu Rahma, and Jamal Jum’a, to mention only a few recent examples, have been imprisoned without charge or trial, a practice that has been harshly condemned by Amnesty International.
Historically, successive Israeli governments went even further in suppressing civil and popular resistance: one of Yitzhak Rabin’s strategies in the First Intifada, for instance, was to “break the bones” of young Palestinian protestors, often "preemptively;" more recently, Israeli military forces have brutally dispersed weekly nonviolent Palestinian protests.....
Such methods have resulted in the injury of hundreds of peaceful protesters, including some internationals and Israelis, as well as the death of several Palestinian civilians. American human rights activist, Tristan Anderson, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile while protesting peacefully in the village of Ni'lin against the Wall.
Your appearance in Israel would lend to its well-oiled campaign to whitewash all the above .......
As a promoter of peace and justice, you are a distinguished member and co-founder of the
.....We call on you not to entertain Israeli Apartheid! Full story and sources
Calling Bono: Your Palestinian Gandhis Exist... in Graves and Prisons
CounterPunch - Alison Weir.......When I was last in Nablus I learned of a massive nonviolent demonstration that had occurred in 2001 – estimates range from 10,000 to 50,000 Palestinian men, women, and children taking part in a nonviolent march. All sectors of Nablus had joined together in organizing this – public officials, diverse parties, religious, secular, Muslim, Christian.
Modeling their action on images of Dr. Martin Luther King, they marched arm-in-arm, believing that Israel would not kill them and that the world would care. They were wrong on both counts. Israeli forces immediately shot six dead and injured many more. And no one even knows about it. At If Americans Knew we are currently working on a video to try to remedy the last part; there’s nothing we can do about the dead.
But there’s a great deal you can do, Bono. You can use your talent and celebrity to tell the world these facts. You can write a New York Times op-ed about the Palestinian Gandhis in Israeli prisons and call for their freedom. You can sing of these Palestinian Martin Luther Kings you wished for, and by singing save their lives.
For the reality is that nonviolence is only as powerful as its visibility to the world. When it is made invisible through its lack of coverage by the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News, et al, its practitioners are in deadly danger, and their efforts to use nonviolence against injustice are doomed.
In the New York Times you publicly proclaimed your belief in nonviolence. Now is your chance to demonstrate your commitment.
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List of Palestinians Killed by Israeli forces while demonstrating against the Israeli wall being built on Palestinian land... Full story and sources
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