I was greatly disappointed to learn that Vieux Farka Touré performed last week at the Tel Aviv Opera House on November 26, 2010. The son of the late, world-renowned Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Touré, Vieux Farka Touré has gained prominence in the international music world in recent years as one of Africa’s leading musicians. His eponymous debut album was released in 2006, and he has since released three albums and performed at the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Vieux Farka Touré’s performing in Tel Aviv is a clear breach of the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid in Palestine—whose inception was in Occupied Palestine by Palestinian civil society. As an artist hailing from post-colonial Mali—a country well familiar with the ravages of colonialism and western imperialism—I had hoped and expected that Touré would have the moral courage to stand against participating in the normalization and legitimization of Israel’s colonization of Palestine.
France colonized Mali in 1892 and retained control until 1960. During these 68 years of colonization France used its own economic interests (e.g. paying for its colonial empires) to determine the economic future of Mali—turning its agricultural production to that of solely cotton. This single-market focus came at the expense of other cash crops, which were more beneficial to Malians, such as peanut farms. This economic control over Mali has directly contributed to much of the poverty Mali now faces (in 2009, Mali’s GDP per capita stood at approximately $1,200, while France’s was $32,800—the discrepancy a lingering ghost of the cost of colonization to indigenous populations, even four decades after gained independence).
Likewise, Israeli colonization of Palestine and its system of apartheid has had extremely negative economic ramifications for Palestinians. Israel, established on 78% of historic Palestine, has, since 1967, further appropriated 40% of the Occupied Territories—making it off limits to Palestinians. Israeli settlers routinely uproot olive groves and violently threaten Palestinian farmers during olive harvest season—whose products are a vital source to the Palestinian economy. Israeli imposed trade restrictions have resulted in a West Bank economy flooded with products made by illegal Israeli settlements, and a limit on Palestinian exports from the West Bank. Israel continuously exploits Palestinian natural resources for its own economic benefit—one example being the production of Ahava beauty products made from mud from the Dead Sea. This multi-million dollar Israeli company is situated in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, collecting mud and other resources from a site on the Dead Sea which borders the West Bank. In doing so, it is stealing resources that rightfully belong to, and should benefit, Palestinians. A recently passed law that will prohibit Palestinians from accessing fresh water sources is another example. Israeli imposed checkpoints, roadblocks, and road closures have also had a negative effect on internal Palestinian trade within the West Bank. Perhaps most devastating, if one can tier devastation when speaking of colonization, is Israel’s illegal, lethal blockade of the Gaza Strip. By almost hermetically sealing the Gaza strip for four years, the Israeli imposed siege has impoverished 1.5 million Palestinians, strangling an already feeble economy, and further fracturing Palestinian society between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Much as France’s colonization of Mali, whose residual effects are still visible and present today, deleteriously affected indigenous African populations, Israel’s colonization of Palestine is oppressing Palestinians’ rights to freedom, self-determination, and growth as a people. Whether European colonization of Africa, Asia, and South America of decades ago, or Israeli colonization of Palestine at present, colonization is a suffocating, destructive, unjust, and unacceptable force. Presumably, Vieux Farka Touré would agree that French colonization was a violent, racist institution that caused great harm to the people of West Africa. If Vieux Farka Touré believes that Malians deserved (during French colonization, and deserve today) the right to self-determination and freedom, he should extend those same beliefs to Palestinians today under Israeli colonization.
By performing in Tel Aviv, Vieux Farka Touré is siding with and normalizing colonization and apartheid. Cancelling his performance would have sent a clear message that he neither accepts nor supports colonial projects. Many prominent musicians have recently cancelled scheduled performances in Israel—including Snoop Dogg, Gil Scott Heron, Sting, the Tindersticks, Devendra Banhart, the Klaxons and Gorillaz Sound System, Elvis Costello, and the Pixies. The fight against apartheid in South Africa showed us that cultural boycott and isolation is an effective, strategic move to pressure an apartheid government to capitulate its oppressive system against an indigenous population. Indeed, Nelson Mandela believes “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” The Palestinian BDS movement is growing in victories, but needs continuous support to send a clear message: the world will not accept Israeli colonization and apartheid.
Many people today look down on European colonialism as a dark era in world history. I hope that Vieux Farka Touré will realize that colonialism is colonialism, whether it happens in West Africa or in Palestine, the next time he is asked to perform in Israel. By performing in Tel Aviv, Vieux Farka Touré has directly supported a racist and oppressive system. As the adage goes—‘silence is compliance’, however in Touré’s case it was not silence, but his music that was compliance in the unjust, violent, and illegal institution of Israeli apartheid.
Shireen Tawil is a public health professional specializing in mental and reproductive health based in Beirut.
“Vieux Farka Touré’s performing in Tel Aviv is a clear breach of the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid in Palestine”
Fortunately, you’re not a judicial or legislative body, so people who disagree with you are not breaching anything.
“By performing in Tel Aviv, Vieux Farka Touré has directly supported a racist and oppressive system.”
By living in Palestine, you’re supporting a terrorist organization in Hamas. Doesn’t make sense? Neither does your reasoning.
Since BDS is neither a judicial nor legislative creation, there’s obviously no sense to your statement that only a judicial or legislative body can define its parameters.
Right, and thus there is nothing to breach.
Breach: (v) to break or act contrary to (a law, promise, etc.).
(n) an infraction or violation, as of a law, trust, faith, or promise.
Toure’s performance was a breach of the call to boycott, divestment and sanctions– one does not breach only legal agreements, but also ones of good faith or conscience. Since an established, internationally recognized and supported movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions does exist, there is, in fact, something to “breach”. Moving away from semantics, drawing the parallel between living in Palestine and supporting Hamas and performing in Tel Aviv and supporting Israeli apartheid is faulty at best. Hamas is an independent militant entity, not an internationally recognized government, as the Israeli government is. By actively– and of his own agency– participating in Israel’s entertainment and cultural sphere, Toure is going against the BDS movement and thereby supporting the current Israeli status quo vis-a-vis the Palestinians, which is apartheid. Being born Palestinian in Occupied Palestine does not mean one is an active supporter of Hamas, or the PA for that matter.
Gee, I did not know Beirut was a municipality located in Palestine.
Much of Israel considers it so.
Wow, and I thought the Syrians had it bad with their knowledge of geography. Turns out Israel’s even worse.
Doesn’t colonialism require the exploitation by a stronger country of weaker one; the use of the weaker country’s resources to strengthen and enrich the stronger country
link to wordnetweb.princeton.edu
Which is the stronger country here? Wouldn’t it be the opposition of colonialism? A weaker country (Israel) took control of territory controlled by the stronger country (England).
Why are you trying so hard o play dumb Yonira?
Your own question contains the obvious caveat – “territory CONTROLLED by England – not England itself. Had it been England, Israel would have been wiped off the map by British forces.
Doesn’t colonialism require the exploitation by a stronger country of weaker one; the use of the weaker country’s resources to strengthen and enrich the stronger country
no. try googling colonialism and reading the first page of definitions. yours isn’t one of them.
While I understand that pieces like this are important in making parallels between the Zionist project and other colonial endeavors of the past, and appreciate the lengths the author went to in order to lay such parallels bare, BDS has strict guidelines for a cultural boycott. Perhaps Toure’s performance violated them, however simply performing in Tel Aviv doesn’t make the case. If he had performed in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem, then yes, location would be enough. However, BDS cultural boycott guidelines state the following:
As in the cultural field, events and projects (such as those involving educators, psychologists, or historians) involving Palestinians and/or Arabs and Israelis that promote “balance” between the “two sides” in presenting their respective narratives or “traumas,” as if on par, or are otherwise based on the false premise that the colonizers and the colonized, the oppressors and the oppressed, are equally responsible for the “conflict,” are intentionally deceptive, intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible. Such events and projects, often seeking to encourage dialogue or “reconciliation between the two sides” without addressing the requirements of justice, promote the normalization and perpetuation of oppression and injustice. All such events and projects that bring Palestinians and/or Arabs and Israelis together, unless based on unambiguous recognition of Palestinian rights and framed within the explicit context of opposition to occupation and other forms of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, are strong candidates for boycott. Other factors that PACBI takes into consideration in evaluating such events and projects are the sources of funding, the design of the project or event, the objectives of the sponsoring organization(s), the participants, and similar relevant factors.
link to usacbi.wordpress.com
It has not been satisfactorily demonstrated that Toure violated these guidelines. If he has, this condemnation is warranted. If not, then the parallel is instructive but that’s pretty much it.
Thank you for your thoughtful and well researched response. The section of the boycott guidelines you quote, you are right, does not apply to Vieux Farka Toure’s performing in Tel Aviv as they concern partnerships between Israeli institutions and Palestinians which do not tackle the core issues of Israel’s occupation– specifically on an academic level. However, the first point in PACBI’s guidelines to the BDS movement (link to pacbi.org
is “Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions”. By performing in the Tel Aviv Opera House, Toure supported an Israeli institution, thereby violating the boycott movement. One could also argue that Toure violated point 2 by generating funds/income for the Tel Aviv Opera House.
You can read PACBI’s appeal to John Lee Hooker Jr. not to perform in Tel Aviv a few days before Toure did link to pacbi.org