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Bono slammed for U2's decision to play in Israel

By
PATRICK ROBERTS
,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Monday, February 8, 2010, 7:10 AM
Updated Monday, February 8, 2010, 9:38 AM
Read more: Israel, Middle East, Bono (Musician)


U2 frontman Bono
U2 frontman Bono

Rock star and activist Bono and his band U2 face a boycott and action from pro-Palestinian groups after agreeing to play in Israel this summer.

The influential Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has urged Bono to 'say no to Israel,' pointing out he has turned down a similar invitation two years ago.

"Performing in Israel would violate the almost unanimously endorsed Palestinian civil society Call for Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This Call is directed particularly towards international activists, artists, and academics of conscience, such as yourself. Moreover, it would come a year and a half after Israel’s bloody military assault against the occupied Gaza Strip which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and 5380 injured, " the letter stated.
 
The letter also called on Bono to live by what he recently wrote in The New York Times. "In a recent New York Times op-ed, you wrote of your hope ‘that the regimes in North Korea, Myanmar and elsewhere are taking note of the trouble an aroused citizenry can give to tyrants.’

“You went on to further elaborate on the hope that “people in places filled with rage and despair, places like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi.” Rather than shifting the blame from the violence of the colonial oppressor to the resistance of the indigenous oppressed and characterizing the Palestinians as a population filled with “rage and despair,” it is more apt to consider them among the “aroused citizenry” responding to tyranny – Israel‘s regime of occupation and apartheid."

The letter goes on to praise Bono's activism in other conflict resolution areas: "A whole generation was affected by your musical activism, when you sang of the civil rights movement in America, the everyday human heroes in El Salvador and the brave struggles in Ireland – you filled a space that forced political morality into pop culture. Entertaining apartheid Israel despite all the injustice it is committing against the Palestinians would significantly smear this great legacy of yours.

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Posted by IrishAndProud on Feb 10, 2010, 02:34 PM EST
As for your thoughts about the Jewish faith, kickstar...I really don't care. Those are your views -- and they change nothing.
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Posted by IrishAndProud on Feb 10, 2010, 02:28 PM EST
It's free and open space to post as many responses as I please, kickstar -- just as it is for you. There's a lot to say about this matter, which is why I've done so...I say what I feel is important. If you don't like it, don't read it. Pretty easy stuff. As for you thinking I'm Jewish (interesting you believe G-d is telling you that), I'm flattered and only take that as a compliment, even though it's not so (I do have Jewish family, though). I spell G-d that way -- with a letter missing -- for the same reason that Orthodox Jews do: The name is to remain so revered that even writing it out entirely should not be done. I respect and agree with that approach, and so I do it, myself.
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Posted by kickstar on Feb 10, 2010, 02:17 PM EST
Hey ' IrishAndProud ' Do you think this is your Blog space???And Do you know what G-d tells me about you ??? You are Jewish and you follow the Superstitions that make up that belief system...Try typing his name it is God very simple God.
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Posted by seanomelbourne on Feb 10, 2010, 01:28 PM EST
I,m like a flower born to blush unseen wasting my sweetness on the desert air" (Grey).Irish shed your siege mentality and you will set yourself free .
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Posted by IrishAndProud on Feb 10, 2010, 05:52 AM EST
(continued)...now, about Arabs and Christians (some are both) living in Israel, were you aware that Arabs in Israel are perfectly allowed to practice their faith there (Israel even allowed Arab women to vote before any Arab nation did), and are exempted from compulsory military service for Israel (though many do, in fact, serve)? And finally, we in the west have the luxury of being concerned about democracy (a Greco-Roman concept, not Jewish), but when you're a Jewish person living in your tiny, ancient homeland -- surrounded by the sea on one side and hostile enemies who've sworn your destruction on nearly all others -- you can't just pull out of this area, or leave that area because some foreign country(s) thousands of miles away demand that you conform to THEIR ideas of goverment, society, borders, etc. It just doesn't work that way for certain other nations...nations like Israel, in particular. Now throw in on top of all this, of course, the fact that the Jews have been targeted over and over and over again throughout history for persecution, pogroms, murder and extermination like virtually no other people -- and you can begin to see why they feel as they do, with regard to self-preservation. Most other lands they've been murdered and/or expelled in, and they have others continuously threatening to do likewise to them, in their own land. They do not deliberately 'keep' the Arabs in perpetually overcrowded and impoverished conditions because they're evil and just love seeing them suffer; the Israelis probably like the whole situation even less than the world does. But they don't have a lot of options, here.
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Posted by IrishAndProud on Feb 10, 2010, 05:36 AM EST
Sean, if you read the Jewish T-rah, you will see that Abraham (whose name was originally Abram, before he was recognized as the first Jew) was specifically commanded by G-d to LEAVE his homeland and go to the land which today is Israel. Further, when the Israelites left slavery in Egypt and were given the T-rah, the boundaries of their land were very specifically marked...again, with that land being precisely where their descendants currently live. Yes I know the UN does not recognize those areas as part of Israel...but A) Israel took control of those areas preemtively when Arab armies were moving to destroy it in 1967, and B) Judea and Samaria (aka the 'West Bank') were, and have always been the very heart of Jewish Israel. Without those areas, Israel is especially vulnerable to another attack, being only 10 miles wide at its narrowest...and as I've mentioned, we've seen what happened when Israel merely withdrew from Gaza alone, expecting 'peace' in return; they only got the opposite, by an emboldened enemy, who repeated their goal of wiping Israel out. Jerusalem has always been Israel's capital, and in fact was a Jewish city long before it was in any way Arab (let alone Crusader). Jerusalem is mentioned countless times in the T-rah, and yet does not even appear ONCE in the entire Muslim Q'uran. As for Islam, I've no problem with it so long as its followers do not seek to kill Jews, destroy Israel, and overrun western countries with its people and culture and impose its views by force and/or terrorism on others (this is also why I'm not a neo-con, regarding democracy).


ST. PATRICK'S DAY RECIPES

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    Guinness and Baileys Irish cupcakes

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