Alicia Keys performs contentious Israel show despite opposition

Alicia Keys went through with a concert in Tel Aviv last Thursday night (4 July), despite mounting pressure to cancel the date.

The R&B star’s performance had long been the subject of campaigns calling on her to observe a boycott of Israel, in protest against the state’s reported treatment of Palestinians.

Critics urged her to heed the Palestinian civil society call for international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and petitions signed by hundreds of U.S. organisations were delivered to the New York headquarters of the singer’s charity Keep a Child Alive, which looks to provide treatment for those affected by HIV/AIDS.

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, a high-profile advocate of the campaign, published an open letter to Keys, introducing himself as “a fellow musician” who “used to be in a band called Pink Floyd,” and called on her not to “give legitimacy to the Israeli government policies of illegal, apartheid, occupation of the homelands of the indigenous people of Palestine.”

Others, including rapper Talib Kweli, publicised calls on Keys to reconsider.

In a statement given last month to the New YorkTimes, Keys defended the decision, explaining: “I look forward to my first visit to Israel. Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show.”

Keys’ situation draws parallels with the movement to effect a cultural boycott of South Africa during apartheid, as popularised by the 1985 Artists United Against Apartheid song “Sun City.” Ben White, an author and activist, told Best Fit: “Just as in South Africa, where artists refused to play in famous venues like the Sun City resort, so now cultural workers are being urged to boycott Israel, whose government and propaganda groups seek to whitewash and hide the horrific daily reality.”

“The Palestinian civil society call for an international Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign to end Israeli impunity and realise basic Palestinian rights includes cultural boycott. Culture is not ‘apolitical’ – isolation is a way of saying that systematic racism, occupation and apartheid are not going to be tolerated.”

Late last year, Stevie Wonder- who in 1985 had his music banned in South Africa as a result of his opposition to apartheid- cancelled a performance at a Los Angeles fundraiser for the Friends of the Israel Defence Forces, citing “the current and very delicate situation in the Middle East.” “ith a heart that has always cried out for world unity, I will not be performing,” he said.