So it seems the Carey Irish Dance Academy and An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) are leading us a merry dance, if you will pardon the pun. Their organisation of what they are calling the first ever Israeli Feis has created a furore of objections from Irish people at home and abroad. Palestinans in the occupied West Bank are calling for the event to be cancelled.
The organisers of the Feis originally defended their breach of the international cultural boycott of Israel claiming that the event is “not about politics” and specifying that “running a feis in Israel does not mean we support or are involved with the Israeli government or any extremist groups in any way shape or form.”
At the time I called the statement a cop-out and wondered if they were being extremely naïve or deliberately misleading. As it turns out, it would now seem to be the latter.
Following several posts criticising the breaching of the cultural boycott, the Israeli Feis facebook page censored the posts and closed it for public comments. This week the page linked to an article from the Israeli embassy page in Dublin which aggressively ridiculed opposition to the feis-event. The censorship clearly does not apply to posts from the Israeli government and its embassy.
The Israeli Embassy gets a free run on the Feis pages
It should be remembered that the Israeli embassy in Dublin is no ordinary diplomatic mission – it is notorious for its online extremist views. Last year public opinion forced it to delete several controversial anti-Palestinian images from its official twitter feed.
The offending posts were condemned worldwide as racist and included one of the Molly Malone statue wearing Muslim-style clothing entitled “Israel now Dublin next” and another of a Palestinian flag superimposed with a picture of Adolf Hitler with the words “Free Palestine now!” Only last week the embassy’s twitter account advocated that Palestinians should move to Syria.
This is the extremism that “non political” CRLG and the Careys are now supporting.
Extremist tweets from the Israeli embassy in Dublin
Last summer in an interview on Israeli military radio, Nurit Tinari-Modai , the Deputy Ambassador to Dublin – and the Ambassador’s wife (!) – launched an astonishing attack on Irish critics of Israel denouncing pro-Palestinian supporters as “ignorant [and] anti-Semitic with an intensely rooted hatred of Jews.”
Playing the anti-semitic card is, of course, the standard refuge for an Israeli government under international pressure. It is the proverbial red herring intended to suffocate the debate and totally ignores the steadily increasing number of Jewish individuals and organisations both in Israel and abroad who condemn the barbarity being inflicted on the Palestinians in their name.
Whether it be the numerous Israeli soldiers who testify to the horrors they were forced to participate in, the conscientious objectors who protest at their own government’s policy of occupation, the numerous Israeli organizations documenting human rights violations or the prominent Israeli politicians such as former Israeli president Avraham Burg who warns that Israel’s immoral war on the Palestinians will lead to Israel losing its very soul.
And then there are the countless number of Jewish writers and academics who make their voices heard in protest at Israel’s human rights violations and the state’s oppression of the Palestinians. People like Miko Peled, Michael Selzer, Ilan Pappe, Rabbi David Weiss, Moshe Menuhin, Eibie Weizfeld, Steve Quester, Joel Kovel, Norton Mezvinsky, Ora Wise, Norman Finkelstein, Phyllis Bennis, Adam Shapiro, Daniel Boyarin to name a few.
The international cultural boycott was started by the people on the receiving end of the Israeli oppression – the Palestinians themselves. It is a non-violent campaign which challenges a state which violates international law on a daily basis. The campaign is receiving increasing support and leaked Israeli government documents show that it is having a real impact.
The Carey Academy and the CRLG are either pawns in the Israeli propaganda machine or willing participants in promoting the Israeli apartheid state. Which is it? They should heed last week’s call from the Jewish Voice for Just Peace and the Palestinian solidarity groups which are asking them to withdraw from the event.
Musician Anthony Davis who was originally billed for the event has already done so. The ajudicators for the Feis – Seamus Ó Sé, Áine Ó Sé and the CRLG should follow his lead.
You can sign the petition urging the Carey Academy not to dance in Israel here -#DontDance4Israel.
Absolute bunkum….Israel is the only democratic state in that part of the World. Keep supporting Israel, don’t listen to the hatemongers and anti-Semitic rantings of the lefties.
William,
Your predictive text is playing up! You wrote ‘democratic state’ when it really should have said “brutal, apartheid state”!
Pointis don’t be daft you should be supporting a democratic state or do you prefer the lunacy in Isreals neighbouring countries?
Neill, I would of course want to support a democratic state but fortunately none exists in the region.
Israel is unapologicatically a sectarian Jewish state. I don’t want to see anybody representing me supporting any sectarian state which unfairly discriminates against a significant section of their population and that includes Islamic run States or Christian run States which unfairly discriminate against a significant proportion of the population.
neill, it’s not a binary choice. One can condemn the actions of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Israel.
Of course there would be a lot more and a lot better democracies and peace in the Middle East if Britain, France, Israel & the USA hadn’t overthrown them, installed & supported brutal dictatorships and monarchies.
Eddie,
This is an inspiring piece. It is hard to understand how normally decent and honourable people can come out so vehemently in support of the Israeli regime which is enforcing such hardship, apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Palestianian people.
They sometimes would appear to have hearts of stone.
I would not be at all surprised if there were not some financial incentive on offer to the organisations supporting the Feis!
Evidence of war crimes in Gaza will be considered by the International Criminal Court. Who is paying the piper for the dancers?
As is common with the advocates of ” Democratic Israel ” William scribbles a sentence and assumes , because he adds the well-worn drivel ” Anti-Semitic ” that this will act as a bulwark against criticism .Israel stands indited in front of the world. A repressive ,apartheid , racist regime , guilty of heinous war crimes , using white phosphorous and cluster bombs , targeting ambulances ferrying injured and maimed to hospital , and the deliberate targeting of civilians especially women and children , all while ignoring countless UN resolutions and the pleading of the international community .
It would seem Eddie, that the Carey Dance Academy have already made a strategic decision to set up an Israeli Academy School some years ago. The Feis is an act of support for that Israeli Academy by endorsing it with the prestige of a Feis.
I think it would be a lost cause appealing to the better nature of the Carey Academy who have already firmly nailed their pro-Israel flag to the mast.
I think that it is important that the general public are made aware of the pro-Israel stance of the people who are organising this Feis.
I have no problem with a cultural boycott of Israel as they have obviously been guilty of human rights abuses. But where do you stop? If you don’t want to be accused of selective hypocrisy, you would also have to boycott all other states which are guilty of similar abuses. I give you Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Quatar, China, Russia, etc, etc. Are there cultural boycotts currently in place for any of these states, if not there should be : Israel can’t be a special case.
There should be a boycott of any regime which subjugates it’s own population!
The fate of Israel is almost certainly sealed, the only question is the level of suffering and death that will happen in the interim.
Scenarios
1. Two party state based on 1967 borders – Israel will never agree to it. The closest we got was the Clinton Camp David talks that offered the Palestinians a country cut into almost a dozen separate cantons with Israeli controlled strips separating each one from the other – unacceptable to the Palestinians and rightly so.
2. One party state encompassing the entirety of the occupied territories. Israel will never agree to it because Jews would be a minority in the state.
3. Outright annexation of the occupied territories and expulsion of the Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt. The world would not stand for it. Israel would become a pariah state and it’s economy would collapse.
4. Outright genocide of the Palestinians. Not going to happen, if it did pariah status and economic collapse. Probably military invasion.
5. The salami slicing of Palestinian land by expanding settlements, slowly pushing the Palestinians off the fertile land, the land with water. A slow motion continual annexation and eviction of Palestinians off their own land.
#5 is the strategy Israel has been following for the last 30 years as evidenced by the pattern of settlement expansion and land annexation over that time. BDS is the last ditch attempt to pressure Israel to go with 2 state solution of contiguous Palestinian land. If it doesn’t work the next steps are ugly, very ugly for all involved and will escalate.
It would seem Eddie if the Twitter posts are correct that common sense has prevailed for the Carey Dance Academy in Birmingham.
https://twitter.com/taigstaigs/status/618367114370531329