Arts & Culture
Morrissey to Play Tel Aviv Festival, Palestinians are Mad
By Mordechai Shinefield / April 18, 2008
Morrissey, perennial lovelorn crooner and former Smiths frontman, recently announced his plans to play the Heatwave Festival in Tel Aviv July 29th. He broadcast the announcement from Los Angeles where he sported what looks like a Sharpie tattoo of the word Israel written in Hebrew on arm. “God bless Israel, stay nice,” he said and did some kind of half salute and blew a kiss to the camera.
While Israeli Moz fans are understandably excited, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) threw a fit. They feel the famously outspoken activist is betraying his ethics by playing “despite [Israel’s] colonial and apartheid reality.”
You may be forgiven for thinking that the PACBI was just looking for something to complain about on a slow news day, but you’d be wrong. PACBI are such die-hard Moz fans that they scrapbooked some lyrics from “This is Not Your Country” to the press release. The PACBI also paraphrased the original lyrics, “One child shot, but so what?” into “One Palestinian child shot, but so what?”
We suspect PACBI is just annoyed that Morrissey is limiting his Middle East performances to Israel. Back in January, British music rag NME reported that Morrissey was in talks with the government of Iran to play a Tehran concert this year, and follow up with a region tour. The only announcement since, though, has been Moz’s tattooed Tel Aviv love-in. Even the most patient Smiths fanatic is bound to get hot under the collar at missing a chance to see the pompadoured rock star live. If he wants to keep his West Bank fan club, he better schedule a show for Nablus stat. Fair is fair.
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That dimwitted Thatcherite capitalism has made Morrissey a very wealthy man indeed. Far from being a "rebuke" of it, Morrissey is a living fucking testament to it. As the saying goes, once you've learned how to fake sincerity, you've got it made. Hats off to Morrissey, and every other artist who made bank while pretending to give a shit about the working class.
change half of your headline from "Palestinians are Mad" to "Palestinians are Insane" and you'd be almost right.
No one in Israel is happy about children getting killed. Now, as soon as the Pals stop using their children as suicide bombers they might have some cause to complain. Not much of a cause since most children get killed because of Palestinian violent and murderous attacks on Jews.Â
Palestinian composed Daoud Barenboim will be playing Deutschland deutschland ubder alles, the Horst Wessel Lied, and Wagner music in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, and Gaza. Hope he stays there and never comes to Israel
I believe Moz would support a two-concert solution to the PCACBI issue if there were 200 people in all of Palestine who knew what or who the Smiths or Morrisey are.
Gangsta Rap on the other hand……big in PA-Town "Represent!"
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