World Celebrities Avoid Sharon’s Israel: Washington Post
OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, July 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The world's
great musicians take a pass on Israel because they fear for their
security, but mainly because they disagree with the Israeli
government’s policies against the Palestinians, the Washington
Post reported.
"Fifty
percent or more of the foreign artists have canceled," said Zubin
Mehta, music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In the
current production of Richard Strauss's opera "Salome," he
said, "we've had eight cancellations in the cast."
The
orchestra announced Monday, July 29, that it was forced to cancel an
eight-concert tour in the United States next month because no
insurance company would cover the performances due to concerns about
possible attacks, said a spokeswoman for the orchestra, Dalia Meroz.
Israel
also used to be a regular stop on the pop music circuit, hosting the
likes of Madonna, Eric Clapton, R.E.M. and Santana. But it has been
more than a year since a mega-star played in Jerusalem, the Post
reported. In some cases, Israeli artists have been disinvited from
playing abroad. And the Tel Aviv film festival was canceled this year
because the organizers feared no stars would come.
The
problem goes beyond the arts. In March, the European football
federation suspended soccer matches in Israel, citing security
concerns. Israeli home games are scheduled to be played in Cyprus.
Influential
academics, angry at the Israeli government's actions against
Palestinians, are pushing a boycott of Israel that hundreds of
university professors have joined, said the Post. And on the
economic front, some Norwegian supermarkets label Israeli products
with stickers so customers can decide whether to buy them.
"Israel
is not the flavor of the month, that's for sure," Mehta said.
"The world is turning against it."
While
there is little evidence of an internationally coordinated anti-Israel
boycott of the sort aimed at South Africa in the 1980s, a sense of
isolation is taking hold in Israel, along with a concern that Israel
is being shunned, dealing a blow to its national psyche and its
decades-long drive for acceptance.
"Israel
has always wanted to be integrated. It's an obsession," said
Calev Ben-David, managing editor of the Jerusalem Post, who
complained that "even the traditional supporters of Israel are
not coming" these days.
"Never
since the worst days of the Lebanon war has Israel felt so alone and
isolated," he said, referring to the Israeli invasion of its
northern neighbor in 1982.
Many
artists have canceled appearances because of concerns about
Palestinian suicide bombers who have attacked buses, hotels,
restaurants and nightclubs in retaliation for Israel’s everyday
atrocities in the occupied Palestinians territories, including
assassinations, abductions, incursions and air-raids.
Israel
came under fire after the April 2002 Jenin massacre in which hundreds
of Palestinian lives were lost and dozens of homes were demolished.
The Jewish state further drew a barrage of criticism for its bloody
air-raid early Tuesday, July 23, on Gaza, in which 18 Palestinian civilians
were killed and 176 were wounded.
A
U.S.-built Israeli F-16 warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a building
in densely-populated Gaza City early Tuesday, killing 18 civilians,
eleven of them children, including a two-month-old infant. The target
for assassination, Hamas military chief Salah Shehada, was killed in
the attack, along with his wife and daughter.
The
raid triggered wide international condemnation, including from the
United States which described it as “heavy handed.”
Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat accused right-wing Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon of continuing a "policy of massacres" and
criticized the world community for failing to speak out.
Sharon
personally approved the strike and congratulated his forces on
"one of the most successful operations," according to Agence
France Presse (AFP).
Several
European and Arab leaders condemned the attack, with U.N. human rights
chief Mary Robinson saying that under international law "the
reckless killing of civilians is absolutely prohibited."
Israel
braced for revenge attacks as Hamas and other Palestinian resistance
groups’ vowed retaliation for the deadly raid, which triggered
security concerns among the Israelis inside and outside Israel.
But
many Israelis say that while security concerns are almost always the
sole reason given for the cancellations, they believe many people are
not coming because they oppose Israel's actions in the conflict with
Palestinians but do not want to say so publicly, said the Washington
Post.
"During
the wars, there were always cancellations for reasons of personal
security, but this time it's a very different story," said a
Hebrew University philosopher and political scientist, Yaron Ezrahi.
"There
is a moral issue about coming to Sharon's Israel when it is engaged in
actions which appear to be excessive," he said. "This
excommunication only reinforces the idea that the whole world is
against us..."
Such
was the case last month at the Israel Festival, one of the country's
biggest cultural events. Three groups – a dance troupe from Belgium
and orchestras from Germany and Italy – canceled at the last moment.
The
groups from Germany and Italy cited security concerns. But the Belgian
group – a 34-member troupe called Rwanda '94 that stages
performances about the massacre of more than a half million ethnic
Tutsis – said its reasons were overridingly political.
"There
was genocide of the Jews, then there was genocide in Rwanda, and now
Israel is trying to get rid of the Palestinians," the group's
music director, Gareth List, told the Post, explaining that
most of the people in his troupe "oppose the way Palestinians
have been treated for the last 54 years."
Similar
concerns prompted more than 200 painters, photographers, poets and
other artists to endorse an Internet petition calling on their peers
to "cancel all exhibitions and other cultural events that are
scheduled to occur in Israel" because "the art world must
speak out against the current Israeli war crimes and atrocities."
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