In 1979 Chris de Burgh
chose to tour Apartheid South Africa, in violation of the boycott call from the
African National Congress. In justification, he
pleaded that “I’m not singing for the government… I hope to
make a difference…”
It is arguable that by ignoring
the boycott call from the democratic opposition to South Africa’s anti-democratic
regime de Burgh was indeed “singing for the government”, and that, far from
“making a difference”, he was in fact helping to reinforce the status quo more than a
decade before the release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island.
In 1984 “12
Dunnes [Stores] workers
went on strike [in Dublin] for two and a half years for the right not to handle
goods from Apartheid South Africa. The strikers were feted by Bishop Desmond
Tutu and international human rights groups. Nelson Mandela said that their
stand helped keep him going during his imprisonment.”
Almost exactly thirty
years after this, Chris de Burgh announced that he would perform in Tel Aviv on
29th March 2014, ignoring the Palestinian call
for a cultural boycott of the Israeli state. The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity
Campaign learned only two weeks before the event of de Burgh’s plan to cross
the picket line, upon which the usual procedures were followed. A
letter was posted via his website, followed by a telephone
call to his management – or, more precisely, to an anonymous answering-machine
in London. Neither approach having received a reply, the letter was made public.
A Facebook
page
was set up and supporters of Palestinian rights posted pleas on de Burgh’s own Facebook
page.
At this point, things
turned nasty. It would appear that defenders of the Israeli state set
particular store by de Burgh’s imminent visit, perhaps bearing in mind his 1979
performance in the other Apartheid state that was Israel’s most intimate ally.
Veterans of internet campaigning reported that they had never encountered such
an outpouring of Zionist propaganda as flooded de Burgh’s page, replete with
the usual venomous and mendacious defamation of anyone with a track record of
support for Palestinian rights. Abuse ranged from “hater” and “old fart” to
“anti-Semite” and “Nazi”; in my own case, hoary canards about my visits to Hong Kong and Iran and my supposedly
having “intimidated a cancer victim” (the latter rebutted here)
were dredged up and recycled shamelessly.
An objective observer,
perhaps from Mars or Venus, might compare the polite attempts to persuade de
Burgh not to break the boycott to the incoherent and often obscene vitriol
emanating from the other side, and draw obvious conclusions about the rights
and wrongs of the case. De Burgh’s response was different. On 24th
March he requested that “someone
out there who has "The Storyman" CD could go to the booklet that
comes with the CD, entitled "Stories," look up track 4,"My
Father's Eyes," and post the whole thing, starting with "Palestine
2000...” When numerous fans obliged, he
wrote: “Thank
you....for those with differing opinions to read...there are always two sides
to every story.”
The song in question comes from 2006 and has the lyric “…I have seen it in my father’s eyes,/…I have heard it in my father’s
voice,/ It’s been a hard life, a hard fight, and all of the things that he
wanted/Are in his hand, but silver would not betray what’s written in the sand,
/And a wall will not keep his people from the Promised Land.”
This might be read in a relatively progressive light: nothing could
keep the Jews from the Promised Land, and no walls will keep the Palestinians
from it. The message is reinforced by being repeated in Arabic by the Egyptian
singer Hani Hussein.
However, the sections of the YouTube video
featuring Hussein conspicuously fail to show the actual wall, illegal under international law, that Israel is building within the occupied
Palestinian territories. This is the very same Apartheid Wall that will have
made it impossible for de Burgh’s West Bank fans to attend the concert in Tel
Aviv which, as a consequence, took place before an audience every bit as
segregated as if it had happened in Apartheid South Africa or in the US
southern states during the Jim Crow years.
If de Burgh were actually stating that Israel is “the Promised Land”
for the Palestinians who were violently expelled from it in 1948 (and their
descendants), then surely it would have been consistent of him to show respect
for those same Palestinians by staying away from Tel Aviv in answer to their
boycott call. In performing this song during his gig there, de Burgh may have
felt that he was making a contribution towards “showing both sides”. In reality
he was demonstrating the ethical and political bankruptcy of his entire stance.
Also on March 24th he wrote (and tweeted) “All your opinions have been noted, thanks
for your input” and “‘I
disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.’
Evelyn Beatrice Hall, author.” (Actually, Hall’s paraphrase of Voltaire.)
De Burgh, or whoever
administers his Facebook site (the responsibility is still his), proceeded to
delete most of the Facebook messages urging him to abide by BDS, while leaving
in place those urging him to perform. These included many posts explicitly defaming
specific BDS advocates, who were prevented from defending themselves by the
simple expedient of being blocked. Only after complaints directly to Facebook
was it was possible to have some of these posts removed. Nonetheless, Chris de
Burgh’s site was transformed into a compendium of propaganda for the Israeli
state, and of uncontested vilification of those who oppose its colonial and
apartheid policies.
This procedure was
entirely unprecedented; it remains to be seen whether it will provide a
template for other artistes determined on crossing the Palestinian picket line
in order to collect the astronomical fees offered by Israeli promoters, but
incapable of thinking up a plausible excuse for doing so. The fact that de
Burgh had recourse to the cliché that “there are always two sides to every
story” (thus “balancing” oppressor and oppressed), while simultaneously
ensuring that only one side saw the light of day, displayed a breath-taking
level of hypocrisy.
