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News > World

BDS Rejoices as Shakira Will Not Perform in Israel in July

  • Singer Shakira listens to a question after launching the Early Childhood Initiative with World Bank President Robert Zoellick at the World Bank in Washington.

    Singer Shakira listens to a question after launching the Early Childhood Initiative with World Bank President Robert Zoellick at the World Bank in Washington. | Photo: Reuters

Published 29 May 2018
Opinion

“We ask you not to “la la la” to the system of injustice that is denying them their human rights and very dreams,” the letter concluded.

After months of intense campaigning by pro-Palestinian activists and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, popular Colombian pop singer Shakira will not be performing in Israel in July, entertainment company Live Nation announced Tuesday. 

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“We welcome news that Shakira will not be performing in Tel Aviv, dashing Israel’s hopes to use her name to art-wash its latest massacre in Gaza,” the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said in a tweet celebrating the news. “Artists, especially UN Goodwill Ambassadors, have a moral duty not to be complicit in covering up human rights violations & apartheid.”

The concert producer Live Nation tweeted Monday night that the report by an Israeli TV station a few weeks ago that Shakira was going to perform in Israel was incorrect, despite being reported on widely by Israeli media and others for weeks before the firm decided to debunk the claim.

“The media has incorrectly reported that Shakira will be performing in Tel Aviv this summer. While no dates this summer will work, Shakira and Live Nation hope to bring a show to her fans in Israel in the future.”

Several Israeli news outlets in fact reported on the news and carried the report from Hadashot TV without questioning it. Since the release of the report, the BDS and other pro-Palestine activists launched a peaceful campaign calling on Shakira to cancel the reported concert.

The most recent letter to Shakira highlighted the Israeli brutal crackdown on Gaza protesters two weeks ago when Palestinians in both West Bank and Gaza protested the U.S. embassy opening in Jerusalem which also coincided with the marking of Nakba, or Catastrophe, day which commemorates the suffering inflicted on Palestinians when the state of Israel was founded in 1948.

At least 61 people were killed in one day by Israeli snipers on the border between Gaza and Israel while more than 1,000 were injured.

“Performing in an apartheid state, whether South Africa in the past or Israel today, in defiance of the voices of the oppressed always undermines the popular struggle of the oppressed to end oppression,” Dozens of Palestinian cultural organizations said in a letter to the Grammy Award-winning pop star and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Shakira on May 24.

“Doing so on the heels of a full-fledged Israeli massacre against our people in Gaza is a morally reprehensible whitewash of the crime.”

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The letter went on to describe the recent carnage in Gaza among other repressive and criminal policies implemented by Israel against the Palestinians.

“In its attempt to suppress overwhelmingly peaceful mass demonstrations by tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, striving for freedom and their UN-stipulated rights, Israel has implemented what Amnesty International describes as a shoot-to-kill-or-maim policy. As a result, more than 100 Palestinian civilians have been killed since March 30th and more than 10,000 injured, many by live ammunition.”

The letter spoke of how just kilometers away from Shakira was set to perform almost two million Gazans were caged by Israel in what many calls the world’s biggest open-air prison.

The Palestinian groups also spoke of Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi, who is serving 8 months in an Israeli prison, “who danced to the tune of your hit song ‘la la la’ with her two relatives and dreamt of growing up to become a football player.”

“We ask you not to “la la la” to the system of injustice that is denying them their human rights and very dreams,” the letter concluded.

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