Dear Lorde – don’t play Apartheid Israel

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
67
33

Nooooooooooooooo…

Pop Star Lorde to Grace Israel’s Stages for the First Time in June 2018

The 21-year-old musician, known for her hit ‘Royals,’ will be making a stop in Israel this summer as she tours with her successful new album ‘Melodrama’

…Dear Lorde

You are one of the most talented New Zealanders on the planet right now. Your music is incredible, your performance is amazing and your politics have always been an inspiration.

You are art.

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I’m a huge fan and you are an icon for my 7 year old daughter.

What you do matters to many.

Which is why so many will beg you not to play in Israel in June of next year.

The cruelty and horror of the illegal apartheid occupation of the Palestinian people is an abomination that can only be shunned, it can not be entertained.

By playing in Israel, you are tacitly supporting their cultural genocide of the Palestinians.

Your strength has been in your melding of an ethical stance with creativity. You risk damaging that by tainting your art and reputation by playing Apartheid Israel.

Courage and leadership would be you announcing that on reflection you can’t play Israel until the Occupation ends.

I hope that becomes the case.

 

67 COMMENTS

      • If that’s what she sees then she’ll come back empowered to help attack Israel. She might even contribute a guest post to TDB telling of how racist, apartheid, and shitty the country is. She can’t do that if she doesn’t go, though. Or if that’s not the truth.

        • I like that logic, Heather. Can I try mass-shooting some people I don’t like? You know, just to see “what it’s really like”?

          • Priss,
            My point is that Israel isn’t as evil and terrible as portrayed and Bradbury might be afraid of her seeimg the truth. If you aren’t open minded then I can’t help you.

          • Heather, your suggestion that “Israel isn’t as evil and terrible as portrayed” is undermined by the illegal settlements on the West Bank; the oppression and blockade of Gaza; Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights; and taking Jerusalem as their capital city.

            I am open minded. But not to rubbish that flies in the face of recent history and evidence.

            You can suck up to the Zionists till you turn purple in the face, but Israel is practising a form of apartheid and perhaps YOU should be the one to open your mind.

            Have a nice day.

          • Yes, Frank. And I thought Lorde was also. That’s why I thought it would be good for her to go and see for herself. You seem to have a very black and white view of things to do with Isael.

          • The ‘view’ on the surface may not always be what it is really like in a country and society. Remember this perhaps, not the best comparison, but one showing how life was ‘normal’ and ‘good’ for most under their rule in Germany during the 1930s:

            http://all-that-is-interesting.com/life-in-nazi-germany

            “While the Nazis, for example, perpetrated atrocities against Jews and others they deemed second-class citizens, many other Germans were simply living their lives.

            They went to school, joined clubs, got married, went to work, went shopping… They did everything that every normal person does – but they did it before the backdrop of one of the darkest periods in history.”

            On a more harmless comparison, I am sure many tourists coming to NZ, I met a few, have only praises for this country, it is so ‘wonderful’, and people are ‘all so friendly’.

            They never go to Otara, Manurewa or Porirua and the poorer parts of this country, and they learn nothing about child poverty, about the high imprisonment rate, particularly of Maori, and other facts.

            Now what ‘advice’ are you giving Lorde now, after reading a bit like the truth what I just mentioned?

        • Due to this law, she may not see the undesired Arabs locked out of the state of Israel, by ‘law’, who are kept in ghettos in Gaza and the West Bank:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Israel_Law

          More info here:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel

          It is easy to present a country and its inhabitants as a ‘shining example’, while keeping others that are not wanted out of the picture, right?

          Also perhaps consider this, a more extreme comparison:
          https://www.quora.com/What-was-daily-life-like-for-an-average-citizen-in-Nazi-Germany

    • Silly remark! She’ll see what her paymasters want her to see, as you well know. She’s going there to make money, not to investigate human rights abuses.

  2. She’s not a stupid person, I’m sure she knows about Israel.
    She has made her choice.
    At this point if she decides to not go, it will simply be to protect her ‘brand’.

    • That’s right. She is not a stupid person,she knows there will never be peace while one side only wants the total destruction of the other.

      • You’re right. There will never be peace as long as the Israelis keep ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank and confining them to the ghetto in Gaza.

        The Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them. They should be ashamed.

  3. She’s a commercial beat now. I’m sure many of her sound engineers, promotors, record executives etc are Jewish. There is is no way you can be in the entertainment industry and not cross paths with Jewish people. So boycotting Israel will land you in serious trouble (i.e. they will boycott you in a heartbeat). Does no-one here remember what Mel Gibson’s 2006 anti-Semitic rant did for his career? Answer: none of it good – it took nigh on a decade to get back into anything resembling Hollywood’s good graces (and work). Unlike acting/directing, a decade out of the pop-music industry would be a career finisher.

  4. Yeah,racism it’s totally fine when it’s against the Jews.
    Now let’s all give a big old Nazi salute shall we!

    • Calm down, mate. Racism isn’t fine, no matter at which ethnicity it happens to be directed. You need to find yourselves a new strawman though. Once you’ve hysterically wailed, “Anyone being mean to Israel is a closet Nazi who wants to drive us all into the sea!” fifty thousand times, it kind of loses its currency as any sort of cogent argument — which it never was, to be honest. But then I’m sure you knew that.

  6. Why do we care where this person does a gig? I don’t know much about Lordey but she’s irrelevant to my life.

  7. If she drew attention to the Israel occupation of Palestine and the genocide, the controlled starvation and isolation that Israel forces on the poor people of Palestine she would find her career at an end.

  9. Art and artistic talent are totally subjective qualities. So, if I disagree with a fan of Lorde about her artistic merits, then there can be no argument, no point to win or lose.

    Young children very rarely have the capacity to process complex moral, ethical and political issues. I doubt a 7-year-old would be affected in any way by Lorde playing Israel. The child is more likely affected by the reaction of the care giver to an issue like this than the issue itself.

    I don’t care what Lorde does, it doesn’t matter to me. I do however care that she may face pressure or some backlash for simple exercising her right to make a living with her talents (that her fans love) while breaking no laws.

    The cult of the celebrity needs to end, as does the politicizing of them. It’s a failed strategy.

  10. Musicians who play Israel, send just one message about the apartheid state-“it’s OK”-that is why the zionists court popular musicians so vigorously

  12. If the PM can put it on the line – one could hope her mutual ‘fan-girl’ would show the same fortitude. Besides, why would one not expect Lorde to have more backbone than the insipid PM of Australia?

  13. Though it may be tough, Lorde has a high bar to reach.

    Lorde is a New Zealander, as a New Zealander she has a proud tradition to live up too. Many of her previous generation of New Zealanders had to make the same choice she is facing with Israel, as with South Africa under apartheid. Yes some decided to go with South Africa against the international boycott movement, and in so doing normalise the regime.

    But a courageous few refused.

    And it is those few who came out on the right side of history, and who are remembered most fondly by their fellow New Zealanders.

    Mourie made himself unavailable for selection during the controversial tour of New Zealand by the Springboks. He returned as captain later that year for the tour of Romania and France.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Mourie

    Graham Mourie, All Black captain, Wikipedia.

    It was those who persisted who earned ignominy.

    “I remember, just before the last test, I had an All Black tracksuit with me and I put it on because [I thought] that’d get me going. But that’s when I realised we weren’t All Blacks, we were there as individuals and we weren’t representing New Zealand, we were representing ourselves. And the country wasn’t behind us. We were just young guys who wanted our chance to beat South Africa on their own turf. That was a bit naive because it was never going to happen.”

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10750033

    Of course, there has always been talk that they were at least well compensated for their efforts. There were rumours of returning players buying farms or expensive tractors, while pre-tour talk claimed they were in line for up to $100,000 each. But the Cavaliers are keeping mum, possibly because they remain products of rugby’s pre-professional era where openly playing for cash was still heresy. According to Taylor, they were given a daily allowance as per normal on All Black tours, while Pierce would make no comment apart from reaffirming that he didn’t go to get rich. Meads says he joined the tour after the pay negotiations were completed and wasn’t interested enough to ask. While some huge numbers have been bandied about, he writes them off as ridiculous.

    Whatever they returned with in their wallets, they arrived to a chilly reception and scurrying through airports to avoid the cameras was hardly a high point in the star players’ careers.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10750033

    The New Zealand Herald’s laconic understatement on the rebel rugby tour, says it all.

    Just as Lorde’s tour of the Israeli apartheid state will not be remembered by New Zealanders as a high point in her career.

    Whatever the monetary reward for Lorde from this tour, it will never be enough to compensate for the loss of respect in the eyes of many of her fellow New Zealanders.

  14. If she is consequent, she cannot perform or go to any country now who treat their minorities with discrimination ( Russia, all the islamic countries etc. and to any country who voted for Jeruzalem as the capital from Israel including the USA. If she does she proves to be just an antisemitic racist.

    • Interesting, “b.gast”, how you seem to be parroting the official Israeli government line: “If she does she proves to be just an antisemitic racist”. So anyone who dares disagree with Israel is an “antisemitic racist”? I guess that’s one way of attempting to close down discussion and debate.

      It won’t work of course. We all understand that tactic.

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