‘Don’t Play in Tel Aviv! Apartheid is Not Punk Rock!’: An Open Letter to Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

Dear Jello,

We are fans of yours, people who have been influenced and inspired by your work. There’s no doubt that over the past thirty years, while so much of American culture has been inundated by cookie-cutter corporate pop, your words and music stood apart in calling out hypocrisy, corruption and oppression. Without that kind of commitment, it’s safe to say that honest, unflinching, politically-charged music wouldn’t look quite the way it does today.

Which is why we must strongly urge you to reconsider your decision for you and the Guantanamo School of Medicine to play your show in Tel Aviv on July 2nd. Sure, you may be sick of hearing it by now. Even a quick glance at your Facebook page will reveal tons of uproar around it. But understand, it’s because your work has meant just that much to so many people. If you play that show it will definitely leave a rather sick smirch right in the center of that work. It will send a message that when it’s really hard to do the right thing, solidarity can be thrown out the window. You’ve never been one to back down during those times, and there’s no reason to start now.

Over the past couple weeks you’ve engaged with many voices in the Palestine solidarity movement, in particular the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in the UK and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Without belaboring their arguments, it is worth admitting that your correspondence, while certainly reflecting the kind of humility and fair-mindedness you’ve always brought to your activism, is also inaccurate at many points, and we feel the need to correct these inaccuracies as fellow punks and activists.

Your assertion, for example that “both the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left are divided” in their support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is at best an over-generalization. The Boycott Divestment Sanctions National Committee (BNC) is supported by all major labor union federations in Palestine, the Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition, the General Union of Palestinian Women, the Union of Palestinian Farmers, disability groups, religious organizations, refugee groups and more.

As PACBI pointed out in their letter to you, “All the popular committees struggling against the wall are part of the BDS movement and have called on their supporters to respect our boycott guidelines.” In total over 170 Palestinian civil society groups have endorsed the BNC’s 2005 call for BDS. Author Omar Barghouti calls it “the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations inside historic Palestine and in exile.”

Nor is it so marginal even among the Israeli left–and its support is growing. In fact, so recognized is the threat that BDS poses to Israel’s machinations that “delegitimization,” that is the diplomatic and economic isolation of Israel, has now become a common topic in mainstream Israeli politics.

You’ve emphasized the “fact-finding” end of your trip, and the announcement of a film crew documenting your trip seems to reflect this emphasis. By all means, go and see for yourself. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters was in a similar position but made the decision to educate himself prior to performing in Tel Aviv; he has since joined the BDS movement in support of cultural boycott. If money is an issue (plane tickets to the Middle East aren’t cheap!) then consider reaching out to raise it. For every Israeli organization willing to foot the bill for you to play, there are plenty of Palestinian groups who will gladly help you witness that reality firsthand. If a Kickstarter account can be started up to fund a film about your trip to Israel, you can most certainly start one up for a fact-finding mission.

You say in your follow-up letter that you “don’t see how the Netanyahu government could manipulate this event for their own purposes. What right wing regime in their right mind would want to namedrop me? I am not exactly known for keep my mouth shut onstage, especially about human rights violations…”

Sure, you ain’t Justin Bieber. But the very fact that you will be speaking out from the stage in the first place will give the Israeli press the opportunity to crow about Israel’s “tolerance” in the midst of an “intolerant” Arab world. Given the dust that has been kicked up around this whole fiasco, it can be all but guaranteed that this is bound to happen. That can already be seen in a small way on JBGSM’s Facebook page, which has been all but hijacked by chauvinistic comments–ranging from claims that Israel is “open to everyone” right on down to the worst kind of gutter anti-Arab racism. And that’s just a handful of kooks on Facebook–imagine what the Israeli media, with its close relationship to Western “McNews,” can accomplish! Each musician that breaks the call for BDS further normalizes the abhorrent injustices of colonization, occupation, and apartheid that are being perpetuated against Palestinians. As members of the global punk community, this is something we can’t allow our music and efforts to be a part of–punk must stand on the side of liberation and freedom.

Regimes who use the white man’s burden as their cornerstone are always eager to twist criticism around into smug self-satisfaction. Perhaps the government won’t get a financial boon out of the performance, but it very well might still be a propaganda victory. This is to say nothing of Israeli businesses–also a target of BDS.

This is particularly pressing now, as the Israeli state is preparing another onslaught against the next Flotilla to Gaza, which is meant to breach Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. You stand the risk of breaking this international picket line right when its strength is needed the most. In six years, the BDS movement has managed to win the support of countless artists and musicians, but it’s still young. You, Jello, are in a unique place to either weaken or strengthen this movement. This is just as important as the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against apartheid South Africa – a picket line you respected and endorsed. Now, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa are supporting the call for BDS against Israel. Desmond Tutu said: “If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction.”

We know you don’t take this decision lightly, Jello. You have never been one to shrug off the crimes committed by the world’s powerful governments against ordinary people. But this is about a lot more than the crimes of Netanyahu or the occupation; it’s about what can put an end to them once and for all. At this crucial turning point for Palestine, now more than ever, it’s about solidarity.

Sincerely,

Punks Against Apartheid