Paul McCartney intends to perform in Tel Aviv on 25 September.
Paul
McCartney
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Estate
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9 Cavendish Road,
London N18 2LU
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Dear Paul,
As someone
who grew up in Liverpool, I read with sadness your that you were playing a gig
in Tel Aviv, Israel on September 25th.
Your announcement
is headed “My message is a peaceful one...” yet the very people who are the
victims of unrelenting violence, house demolition, aerial bombardment, land
confiscation and water shortages are opposed to you coming to Israel. I refer
to the Palestinians.
Forty-three
years ago, when the Beatles were banned from playing in Israel, I like most
people thought of Israel as some kind of socialist experiment in the making. As
someone who grew up as a Zionist, I believed that Israel had made the desert
bloom and was surrounded by those whose only wish was to destroy it. Successive
wars of conquest demolished these myths and in particular the relentless
bombing of civilians in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon.
If we are
honest Paul, where John Lennon led you followed. When John Lennon gave
back the MBE you were forced to do likewise. When he was dead and buried you
were happy to accept a gong, a Knighthood, from Her Majesty. When John wrote in
support of the struggle for Irish freedom, with songs such as Bloody Sunday and
Luck of the Irish, you penned Give Ireland Back to the Irish. When John paid
the fines of demonstrators against the Springbok Tour, the South African Rugby squad,
you kept quiet, your hands in your pockets.
It was
always understood by most artists and entertainers that to play in South Africa
was to endorse the Apartheid regime. Just like the
Palestinians
today, Black South Africans asked that foreign musicians boycott the country
not play in it. The same arguments apply today in relation to Israel. Or have
you not heard of the Jewish only roads in the West Bank
or the land confiscations or the denial of water to the Palestinian
inhabitants?
It is therefore
inexplicable that you should now decide to play in Israel,
which like South Africa
is also an apartheid state. As someone who is Jewish, I have the right any time
I want to 'return' to that country, unlike Palestinians who were born and brought
up there before being expelled.
Are you
aware that discrimination against the Palestinians is not only systematic but
the official policy of the Israeli Government in its attempt to preserve a
Jewish majority in a Jewish state? That every aspect of public life -
education, housing, social services - is divided into Jewish and non-Jewish?
Even today, more than half of the Palestinians
who weren't expelled in 1948 live in 'unrecognised' villages which are liable
to immediate demolition as part of the programme
of 'Judaification' in the Negev and Galilee?
Some 93% of Israeli
land is deemed 'national land' which cannot be sold, rented or leased to
non-Jews.
As you
yourself admit on your web-site, the original idea behind you playing came, not
from the Palestinians or even Israelis opposed to the occupation, but the
Israeli Ambassador in London, Ron Prossor, the official representative of a
Government whose military enforces a ruthless regime of occupation in the West
Bank and which has engaged in a starvation siege of Gaza. When Ronnie
Kassrills, the Jewish minister in the ANC government, visited recently, he
remarked that the situation of the Palestinians was far worse than anything
that Black South Africans had experienced.
The only
conclusion that can be drawn from your decision to play in Israel, especially given that your tour
was cancelled only a few weeks ago, is that the most important question in your
mind was the money you would receive for playing rather than any notions of
peace. As recent publicity made clear, you have far more money at your disposal
than any human being could spend in one lifetime. Do you really need the money
that this concert will provide you? Has it not occurred to you that not only
could you have afforded to make a small sacrifice, as have many other artists
have done who are far poorer than you, but that you would have made a positive
contribution towards bringing about a peaceful solution?
Perhaps the
best comment that could be made about your decision to play in Israel is the
title of a song which was addressed to you on John Lennon's Imagine.
**How do
you sleep at night?**
Yours
sincerely,
Tony
Greenstein
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