the ethical implications of playing a concert in israel

moving this discussion away from the big thief thread, since it’s a question that pops up every so often

is the act of playing music in tel aviv inherently immoral? does it implicitly condone the atrocities committed by israel and in in israel’s name?

yes and yes

next

lol wait I didn't even notice the phrasing of your questions

fuck this

it depends on who is in your family and how large the paycheck is, just like everything else in this terrible planet

honestly wasn’t trying to be a dick with the question phrasing

I am somewhat surprised that Big Thief are getting the backlash that they seem to have gotten for this, considering one of their members is Israeli. I feel more dismayed about artists-playing-Israel who have no ancestral skin in the game (Radiohead, Nico Jaar, Nick Cave).

does it implicitly condone the atrocities committed by israel and in in israel’s name

BDS argues that it does, they call it "art-washing". It is argued that a "business as usual" approach to Israeli-sponsored cultural events both domestically and abroad is an effective misdirection technique away from apartheid. Playing music in Tel Aviv makes it clear that one does not agree with BDS's arguments, which BDS would argue explicitly condones Israeli apartheid. The question is, do you agree with BDS? I do. Big Thief do not. Nick Cave sees BDS as a form of artist censorship, which I would politely describe as a totally bullshit argument. Thom Yorke argues that playing Israel is as ethical as playing Trump-led America, which I would describe as "possibly a good point, which begs the question as to why Radiohead would choose to tour America, if they believe this?"

Nick Cave's announcement that he was going to play there was something I found problematic too.
I mean settler colonialism is always problematic and Israel seems to be very willing to perpetuate things quite consciously.

I was typing that before I read the message re Nick cave cos I did think it was a dodgy move when he was explaining his intentions whenver that was

big thief admitted that they believe they're doing the wrong thing, but they're doing it anyway. they're putting family over geopolitics, which is pretty conservative, yes.

That is false, they did not say that.

(Unless you’re referring to something other than the statement they posted)

their statement was wishy-washy both-sidesism, but by donating the proceeds to helping palestinian children it implies that they believe that their performance is not exactly helping palestinian children

you're right that they didn't say "we are doing the wrong thing"

Correct, and I disagree with your interpretation of the donation.

I don't think playing for people in Israel means that you are complicit or support government and their detestable policies, at least not more than if you're playing a concert and paying your taxes in the United States.
On the other end, you should feel rightfully disgusted just being in Israel. Or at the idea of giving people a good time when the situation nearby is what it is.

I don't think you deserve huge kudos if you're consciously skipping Israel on your concert tour, since it's not a big opportunity cost and relatively easy to do.
On the other end, it's symbolic, part of other boycotts, and it's important that such countries feel isolated. If consumers, tourists and public figures are not acting up and being vocal at an individual level, it makes it harder to build pressure on Western companies doing business there (beyond occupied territories). Russia can be the example now. So I think there is a kind of responsibility for entertainment and it's nice to see artists take it up, even if it's not morally reprehensible not to join those ranks.

I wondered about something similar this weekend when Burna Boy went to play in Harare in return for a USD 250'000 check, where the tickets were USD 40 and there were VIP packages running in thousands. I think that's irresponsible and directly taking money from an oppressive kleptocratic dictatorship. Someone brought up the Trump example. The lines are not necessarily easy to draw.

What other cultural boycotts are as well known?

At least one member of Radiohead is well on their way to TERFhood and Nick Cave has a good deal of recent history of opposing "wokeness" and "cancel culture" so Israel is maybe part of a larger picture.

@ gyac, the South African boycott during apartheid was the model for BDS's protest against Israel iirc.

Part of what I admire the most about BDS's form of non-violent protest (against violent oppression) is that it does create complicity if an artist elects to ignore it. The Israeli state will applaud an artist for coming, and frame it as an indicator that "not the entire world hates us for what we're doing". Once a boycott is in place, I argue that you are, in fact, complicit-- that's what a boycott is for. You don't have to have any thumbs-up-with-the-IDF photo ops to prove it. This is a testament to the efficacy of this form of non-violent protest

Yes, I was talking about current boycotts in response to the handwringing about playing in the US. Sorry for omitting that context.

fgti otm itt

Thom Yorke argues that playing Israel is as ethical as playing Trump-led America, which I would describe as "possibly a good point, which begs the question as to why Radiohead would choose to tour America, if they believe this?"

Yorke is echoing Linda Ronstadt’s cop-out response when she was called out on playing in apartheid South Africa. She said, "If I won't play a repressive government, a police state, then I couldn't play the black countries or Alabama or Boston.”

What Yorke (and Cave and McCartney) are willfully ignoring is the fact that by playing in Israel they are playing for segregated audiences — or, maybe more accurately, they’re playing for the only audience that is, by law, allowed to attend. As the author and scholar Steven Salaita put it (in response to Nick Cave), “Playing Israel isn't the everyday merriment of a normal performance. By doing it, you help absolve what South African activist Desmond Tutu, a longtime BDS supporter, calls ‘an apartheid state’. No amount of lucre is worth cosigning inhumanity. And let me intervene before you even think it: Your art, no matter how brilliant, won't inspire peace and reconciliation. Those things will happen after Palestinians acquire their freedom. How can your art bring people together when one of the parties can't even attend?"

yes, these US analogies are bad even by the debased standards of arguing via analogy

What I wonder is, what do you as a fan of an artist who chooses to play in Israel do about it? I mean beyond posting things on ILM or social media or whatever. Does it affect your own relationship to the artist? For me, to be honest, probably not. That Big Thief album is still my favorite of the year, and also I would love to see them live if I get the chance. For that matter, I still listen to Linda Ronstadt. I guess it's a subset of the whole moral dilemma of "artists I like doing things I don't like."

big thief suck ass and should go away, if this hastens it all the better

Thanks Tarfumes for sharing that Steven Salaita quote. It boggles my mind that Cave might've read such a generous and compassionate argument and not changed his mind.

@ gyac I kinda thought as much sorry for stating the obvious at you!

As for "what to do" I don't have an answer. This issue in particular, when it comes up irl, is where my cortex stops functioning and I feel a welling up of rage and helplessness and usually I elect to refill my water glass and come back when the topic has changed.

I've always boycotted Thom Yorke and Nick Cave, variable levels of white poshness in them both and they are both awful people and make garbage music. Two of the most overrated turds of the 90's.

I don't really buy that you "help absolve" anything by playing there, but it certainly means that you reject BDS. It's the existence of the BDS movement itself that creates most of the moral weight for not playing in Israel - that's all that differentiates it from playing in other objectionable countries. By playing there, you reject and even arguably undermine BDS. It's somewhat circular, but I think that's the fairest way to put it.

And to build on that point – being a BDS supporter means adopting a very specific pov and set of demands.

big thief suck ass and should go away, if this hastens it all the better

― akm, Sunday, June 5, 2022 6

so you don't like them

Well it'd be a weird pull quote

I was a stan for the first three albums, still kind of digging them as of #4, and then just lost interest at the last one, which doesn't seem like a trajectory a lot of people follow

I went to one of Nick Cave's Q&A shows in 2019 where someone asked him about his stance on this. He's obviously got a lot of problems with the left and said he resented activists, Brian Eno, and "the Pink Floyd guy" trying to tell him what to do, and that he's done more for Palestinians than any of those people (which, no?). Anyway, his stance is reactionary and full of shit.

I’m in the “putting in my headphones and turning up the brilliance that is Tender Prey to drown out this idiocy” camp

I don't really buy that you "help absolve" anything by playing there, but it certainly means that you reject BDS. It's the existence of the BDS movement itself that creates most of the moral weight for not playing in Israel - that's all that differentiates it from playing in other objectionable countries. By playing there, you reject and even arguably undermine BDS. It's somewhat circular, but I think that's the fairest way to put it.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Sunday, June 5, 2022 4:00 PM (six hours ago)

otm ... I wish there were movements with as prominent a profile as BDS for other countries with bad human rights records.

I've always boycotted Thom Yorke and Nick Cave, variable levels of white poshness in them both and they are both awful people and make garbage music. Two of the most overrated turds of the 90's.

― calzino

this is super insightful and relevant to the topic, please, tell us more about what musicians you think are "overrated"

lol yeah calz tbf it's not a boycott if you'd never buy their stuff anyway

I'm cool with being irrelevant and offtopic if there is an opening (by my bad interpretation of what a boycott is) to register my hatred of Nick Cave and Radiohead, fp away I'm not even listening!

"Shitty band sides with jailers in biggest open-air prison in the world"

Let's not sugarcoat this, just having an Israeli bassist should be considered a crime against humanity

(Just ahead of people owning a SodaStream)

Dissembling showing your real beliefs there, Nabozo.

I don't suppose you're younger than me, and I can't understand when the internet became a childish game of good VS evil. Is it what people do all day on Twitter ? I'm just saying I've seen more perceptive and finer analysis on ILM when it comes to music, so why is it that when it comes to politics, people reach for their hammer. I don't get it, is it fun ? My sincere impression was posted upthread - and I only partially agree with people claiming that entering / doing anything in Israel is a stance against BDS.

Fwiw it's a sign of the success of BDS that a band like Big Thief feels compelled to issue a statement (even a recycled one) and to make some gesture at helping Palestinian kids. Which doesn't mean people should be satisfied with that, but it's a much different situation than even 10 years ago. BDS is changing the moral calculus on Israel, however slowly.

i don't have a twitter account, fwiw.

i've been a part of BDS movements on and off for a long time, before it even had a more official acronym and was a much more ragtag crew of radical non-Zionist Jews, Palestinians, and others.

one of my closest friends holds dual citizenship between Israel and the US, was born on a kibbutz, etc. He's currently working on archiving the work of one of the great Yiddish modernist poets, in Israel-Palestine, while simultaneously working with his wife and their creative partner (a Palestinian) on creating a material-based archive of Israeli state violence against Palestinians. Trust me when I say we have had long and occasionally difficult conversations about many of the issues surrounding his citizenship! I know there are plenty of shades of grey here, because after all....

Like the US, there are plenty of people who come from Israel who are not religious ethno-fascists.

But voluntarily assisting in the art-washing of Israeli state violence is not a good look, ever.

But there's only one BDS movement now (afaik), with very specific goals. I think you're making the idea of supporting/not supporting BDS more abstract than it is.

Thom Yorke playing in Israel is it, why am I not surprised? Trash human being.

"At least one member of Radiohead is well on their way to TERFhood"

Is this Johnny?

Interesting that this spun off the Big Thief thread, but is pulling in all of the vocal Radiohead/Yorke haters.

Maybe there's just a lot of vocal Radiohead/Yorke haters

well I just read most of the wikipedia page on BDS and there's this weird bit in the Cultural Boycott section:

Many artists are not heeding BDS's call not to perform in Israel, arguing that:

Performing in a country is not the same as supporting that country's government;[197][198]
By performing in Israel, artists have a chance to tell the Israelis what they feel about their government and that can help bring peace;[199][200]
By not performing in Israel, artists sever contacts with Israel's strongly pro-Palestinian cultural community, which risks hardening opposition to the Palestinian struggle among Israelis;[201][202]
BDS supporters like Roger Waters and Brian Eno who urge fellow artists not to perform in Israel are engaging in a form of bullying.[203]

All of those footnote citations are to articles about/interviews with Nick Cave, Thom Yorke, or JK Rowling

yeah i don't think that's what is happening. they're just daft

xp Yeah, they're not saying that at all and it's unfair to preemptively accuse them of it

there's a reason I put a question mark on the end

because frankly it's impossible to think they didn't see what was coming, coming.

shit guys I heard big thief are after the cancel culture dollar

oh look, it's LJ again

anyway forgot we had a broader BDS discussion a while back here: BDS - classic or dud?

Around a year ago, BT had an IG post where they announced they were (voluntarily) withdrawing one of their t-shirts from sale, because one of the little drawings incorporated in the (ugly) artwork was a figure behind bars, or hands holding bars from the inside (they said it was meant to represent something like "your perceptions being imprisoned by your preconceptions," I honestly don't remember) - and because the hands were sort of dark purple or shaded, they decided or someone commented that it was inappropriate in light of racism/incarceration.

There were a lot of comments to that post that were like - "wtf, this isn't anything; why are you guys being so woke; you could have just withdrawn it without making a big statement about it, you're just being performative," etc.

Anyway, I think that episode illustrates (a) their earnestness, (b) their (arguable) clumsiness when it comes to addressing "issues", and (c) the fact that they're not the type to cry "cancel culture!," the opposite in fact.

Basically what I’d like to know is - what is the moral argument (in general, not specifically for bds) for doing nothing when the effort required is so little?

BDS is not a moral stance. Human rights are not a moral stance.

Human rights are a moral construct, yes, but supporting human rights against oppression is a moral stance, and one that I would hope
most of us here would be okay with.

xxp I also remember Adrianne doing the thing on that one day in Summer 2020 where she was enthusiastically posting black squares on IG; and then she followed up with - "Oops, someone informed me that this is actually bad to do, because it's crowding out actually useful information."

So maybe it all sort of fits together, in terms of not necessarily thinking things through or how their messaging will be received. It seems their initial statement was confusing to lots of ppl (even though I thought it was fairly clear)

in the apology post they said they booked the shows bcuz they believed "music can heal." i think they have a particular strand of hippie vapidness going on but it's also a good reminder that being a famous musician even on the indie level often requires a level of genuinely huffing your own bullshit

There was a vibe shift ca. 2004 where people who wrote about bands started somehow being dumber than the people who played in bands and congrats to Big Thief for finding a new bottom to that barrel

Maybe these dumb writers could take their level up by doing a take on the "cancel culture dollar".

Basically what I’d like to know is - what is the moral argument (in general, not specifically for bds) for doing nothing when the effort required is so little?

I would still like to hear the answers of anyone who would like to address this or the other questions in my post that ended with this.
― gyac, Thursday, June 9, 2022 11:13 AM (one hour ago)

honestly, I think it's about choosing one's battles and the imperfectability of humanity. Maybe you are a rare gem, gyac, but most people don't have the mental and/or emotional energy to evaluate the maximum morality of everything they can or can't do and then make the most moral choice in every situation. You could call it "laziness" even. It makes me think of Nestle products and how we are supposed to boycott them because of that corporation's human and environmental rights violations. And most of the time when I go to the store on a hot day, I look at the refrigerators and conscientiously not buy a beverage that has a Nestle corporate mark on it. ... Occasionally though, I slip up, and just grab the thing on sale that's right in front of my face that is cool and refreshing and it's made by Nestle. Oops. ... I feel like this goes back to the early history of Christianity and St. Augustine. idk. It's something I do think about, why do people who purportedly "care about x" not do all the things that would be most effective or supportive for "x"

No. I do what I can, I don’t pretend otherwise. I certainly don’t waste my time online obfuscating over issues that are actually important to some people.

lol @ a parched sara on a hot day stumbling into an OAKLAND 7-11 to quench her thirst with a discounted, lukewarm Banana Strawberry Nesquik

I didn't intend my post to be obfuscating ... it was stream of consciousness and my brain meanders a bit. I also felt like your question was important and should be addressed. It's just, a really challenging question!

xp - the 7-11 is across the street from my apartment and when it gets over 90 degrees (like it will this weekend) ... I will get a slurpee sometimes. But seriously, fuck Nestle.

sorry i mean OAKLAND apartment

There isn't any ethical consumption under capitalism. Not sure why that's being equated with BDS, which is a movement with clear aims and recommendations.

as much I would love to discuss whether there is any ethical consumption under capitalism, I think it would be disrespectful to derail this thread in that way.

Not to get too off-track, but I keep thinking about what Naomi Klein wrote:

When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts.

In Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, the catalyzing event that saves the environment (or gets the ball rolling, at any rate) is a group that starts assassinating the CEOs of heavily polluting corporations, and at one point stages a coordinated attack that sends dozens of airplanes plunging from the sky on the same day. So, I mean, individual gestures are possible if people are willing to make them.

Because it worked in this fictional narrative, you're citing it as relevant to the real-world question(?)

also a coordinated attack is a group effort, not an individual one.

also iirc they'd have to stop the american military too

wait what thread is this

Unabomber revival

and that's okay / here's why

a popular band cancelled their shows in israel after massive public outcry. whatever shit-talking ppl want to do abt the band, fine, but it's much more important to see this is a sign of huge shifts in global consensus on israeli apartheid in recent years...which is the point.

— Derek B (@d_____b_) June 9, 2022

Tarfumes otm, again

It’s a huge shift on absolutely nothing other than occidental progressives patting themselves on the back because one indie changed route. Arabic nations are increasing their normalisation with Israel, US is still sending massive coupons for Israel for them buy US military equipment, BDS continues to be legally outlawed in Western countries. If it is a symbolic victory, sure rejoice if you want to, but BDS remains extremely marginal and the needle has barely moved on Palestinian peace, freedom, prosperity and statehood.

The commercials, directed by Harmony Korine, are to reflect the "evolution" of the chain's store format, drawing attention to, in part, the fact that "this isn't just gas station food, there's real restaurant quality food at 7-Eleven", according to CMO Marissa Jarrantt.

sorry

no that was perfect

No question that freedom for Palestine did not instantaneously happen after one band cancelled their shows in Israel. Movements sometimes move slowly; to diminish or dismiss small victories is impressionistic, and ultimately suggests giving up before other (and larger) battles start.

Sometimes activists are inspired by these small victories, and carry that inspiration with them in order to continue organizing to expand and broaden the fight.

xp to Van Horn Street

Ban Horn Street

Ngl, VHS, but you’re right in many ways.

That said, I think that there need to be many prongs to the way occupation and apartheid are counteracted, and if the global public opinion of the occupation has been souring as a result of BDS efforts, then that’s good! It isn’t everything, obviously, but it’s something.

sorry would never have created this thread if i thought van horn street would post in it

shut the fuck up van horn street

I feel more dismayed about artists-playing-Israel who have no ancestral skin in the game (Radiohead, Nico Jaar, Nick Cave).

Jaar has Palestinian descent and played in a Palestinian-owned establishment. I do not believe it's fair to lump him with Cave and Radiohead.

as far as i can tell bds was fine with jaar doing that, presumably with the reasoning that a palestinian-owned venue is not considered complicit in the occupation

https://www.facebook.com/PACBI/posts/1468414693234083

Jaar signed the letter opposing Israel performances and when he did go in the past I think it was to Ramallah

https://consequence.net/2021/05/musicians-for-palestine-israel-boycott/

Apparently, Big Thief received many threats.

Good.

jaar performed in both ramallah in the west bank and haifa in israel, at palestinian-owned venues in each

Movements sometimes move slowly; to diminish or dismiss small victories is impressionistic, and ultimately suggests giving up before other (and larger) battles start.

otm

If it is a symbolic victory, sure rejoice if you want to, but BDS remains extremely marginal and the needle has barely moved on Palestinian peace, freedom, prosperity and statehood.

― Van Horn Street, Thursday, 9 June 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Sounds like you are happy.

Thank you for correcting me re Nicolas Jaar, and I apologize