Dozens of high-profile musicians, scholars and activists are calling on Australian band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to cancel its performances this month in Tel Aviv.
“When international artists of your stature, despite the appeals of Palestinians, continue to turn up on Israeli stages, the government which promotes these crimes takes heart: whatever it does, it seems there will be no penalty,” states an open letter to the band, signed by political activist Angela Davis, South African anti-apartheid activist Ronnie Kasrils, philosopher Judith Butler and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters.
TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, actor Saleh Bakri, activist educators Marc Lamont Hill and Nurit Peled-Elhanan, writers and film directors Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and John Pilger also signed the letter.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) noted Cave’s previous support of activists who shut down an arms factory, a subsidiary owned by Israel’s Elbit, in Britain in 2014.
Read the full article by Nora Barrows-Friedman at Green Left Weekly.