BRICUP started publishing Open Letters to writers and musicians who’ve announced their intention to perform in Israel during 2008. These letters aren’t only released into cyber-space to go where they will; there’s a particular effort to send them to press and institutions in the artist’s milieu, with the aim of creating a kind of fire-storm around the artist.

So, for instance, after the South African Weekly Mail & Guardian published BRICUP’s Open Letter to South African writer Nadine Gordimer in April 2008, many South African organisations and individuals lobbied her (including Archbishop Desmond Tutu), and the press asked her repeatedly about her intentions. Although Ms Gordimer did not withdraw from the Israeli government-sponsored writers’ festival in Jerusalem that she was scheduled to attend, she did feel sufficiently under pressure to issue a public statement justifying her decision to do so. No-one who read any of the coverage can have doubted the strength of popular feeling behind the boycott call – so perhaps it was no coincidence that within 24 hours of BRICUP publishing an Open Letter to US novelist and anti-racist activist Russell Banks, scheduled to appear at the same writers’ festival, he announced his withdrawal – for ‘personal reasons’.

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen intends to close his current US, Canadian and European tour with a one-off concert in Tel Aviv on September 24. During the 1973 war, Leonard Cohen volunteered to fight in the Israeli army, but later withdrew from the music scene to spend five years in a Zen Buddhist monastery in California. BRICUP has written asking how he can square the Buddhist concept of ‘right action’ with performing in a country whose government and army have so recently committed war crimes against the Palestinians and continue to commit crimes against humanity and international law (see BRICUP’s Open Letter to Leonard Cohen at electronicintifada.net/v2/article10480.shtml).

The US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel immediately distributed BRICUP’s letter to its 400-plus endorsers, and within a matter of days over a hundred Israelis had published their own Open Letter asking him not to go).

A fire-storm of emails began to engulf Robert Kory, Leonard Cohen’s manager (rkory@rkmgment.com). To his credit, he replied to many of them, and had telephone conversations with (amongst others) the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), Artists Against Apartheid in the US, and BRICUP.

It gradually emerged that what Leonard Cohen and his manager were offering was a deal – call off the protests, particularly those at the venues of the European tour, and they would donate the proceeds of the Tel Aviv concert to an unnamed charity.

In response to this, and to the insistence from Robert Kory that Leonard Cohen’s concert in Israel would have a ‘healing effect’, PACBI issued its own Open Letter, ‘Healing Israeli Apartheid, not its Victims?’ (see www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1006). PACBI called on ‘all supporters of a just peace in our region’ to ‘shun [Leonard Cohen’s] concerts and CDs and protest [his] appearances everywhere’.

On May 17, the day after PACBI’s call, Adalah in New York held a demonstration outside Leonard Cohen’s concert at Radio City in Manhattan (see the pix and a report at adalahny.org. Adalah has made available a very useful package of campaign materials: cohen_adalahnypacket.zip).

It is instructive that after the Radio City demonstration, Leonard Cohen’s spokesperson, Tiffany Shipp, told the Jewish daily newspaper in New York, The Forward, that the Tel Aviv concert ‘has yet to be scheduled’ (see www.forward.com/articles/106317/). On May 29 the site administrator at www.leonardcohenforum.com (where there has been vigorous discussion of the boycott call) confirmed to an enquirer that tickets for the Tel Aviv concert are ‘not-yet-existent’.

The dates and locations of Leonard Cohen’s European tour, which starts in July in France, are listed below this article.

But according to the Events Guide published by Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, other artists are also scheduled to appear soon in Israel. English musician Joe Jackson will perform on June 30; US singer Suzanne Vega (who shared the Radio City bill with Leonard Cohen in May, and will surely have been aware of the Adalah demonstration outside) on July 19.

And Ha’aretz names Madonna, Kaiser Chiefs, Pet Shop Boys and Guns ‘n’ Roses as some of the artists with whom negotiations are continuing.

So, although Israeli ambassador to the UK Ron Prosor complains that ‘the boycott is a phenomenon that is growing’; and although the executive director of AIPAC, the hugely influential Zionist lobby in the US, saw fit to warn its congress just this May that ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns’ were ‘entering the American mainstream’ as part of a conscious effort to ‘shift policy’; as long as the Pet Shop Boys, Madonna and Leonard Cohen think it’s okay to play there, we have work to do.

Leonard Cohen’s European tour:

FRANCE (July 6-9): St. Herblain, Paris, Toulouse, Vienne

ISRAEL (September 24): Tel Aviv

ARTISTS AGAINST APARTHEID – www.artistsagainstapartheid.org

Re: Leonard Cohen and the Cultural Boycott of Israel

Artists Against Apartheid does not support Leonard Cohen’s desire to play to a temporarily de-segregated audience in Tel Aviv, Palestine-Israel, as was proposed May 15th, 2009 in a closed meeting with Mr. Cohen's management, publicity team, members of Adalah-NY and Artists Against Apartheid. It is important to realize that Mr. Cohen has found himself at the intersection of an expanding cultural boycott campaign, and the 61st annual remembrance of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were made into refugees. While his intention to bring a healing voice to a land that is in much pain is most commendable, we strongly recommend, in solidarity with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel ( www.PACBI.org), that the show either be cancelled, broadcast from another venue on his tour, or moved to Gaza, where health and healing is most direly needed. It has been said that Cohen is an artists’ artist, mensch, humanist, etc. , and as such does not deserve to be harassed and silenced by the BDS movement. This is however, exactly why we feel Leonard Cohen, of all artists, should not be silent or complicit in the perpetual human rights violations, siege, denial of refugee return, and senseless massacres carried out against the Palestinian people. While Leonard Cohen may support the struggle to end Israel‘s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid, we do not feel these goals can be effectively advanced during this planned concert in Tel Aviv, regardless of the beneficiary of proceeds. The benefit concert idea proposed via his management and publicity team, including its unlikely importation of audience members from the West Bank and Gaza, could also have been proposed by the Israeli Consulate’s PR team as a media device to whitewash their client-state as a progressive and free democracy, which it most certainly is not. While that may not be Cohen’s intention, it will most likely be the outcome if the show goes on in Tel-Aviv. As such, we support the ongoing demonstrations at Mr. Cohen's concerts in Canada, Denver, Boston and Europe, as was initiated by Adalah-NY at his Radio City Music Hall show, May 17th, 2009.

Signed, Artists….

Leon, Awesome! Thanks for sharing the heartfelt letter, and awesome video J Let me know if you publicize the letter, and we can post. We’ve yet to take a public action for Leonard, but we did have a meeting with his manager and some of us at Adalah NY (mentioned in this article: www.forward.com/articles/106317 ) – where they basically insisted that Leonard will save Palestine with “good vibes”. For AAA we’ve discussed sending a letter to Robery Kory endorsed by artists around the world, and publicizing it. let me know if you think we should pursue that route. I’ve attached a draft…

PS: anyone organizing demos in Europe is welcome to build from our materials. We’ve put into one zip file www.artistsagainstapartheid.org/flyers/cohen_adalahnypacket.zip

Andrew