Our Community Relations Council is joining the efforts of the Israel Action Network and the Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), which has alerted us that nearly 16,000 cultural boycott proponents have signed a petition targeting jazz artists scheduled to perform at Israel’s International Red Sea Jazz Festival next month. It urges artists to cancel their planned performances by making disturbing claims that Israel is using their music to whitewash genocide, apartheid and the deaths of Palestinian children.
 
These cannot be the only messages that artists hear. Therefore, in response, we urge you to sign and circulate CCFP’s Anti-Boycott Petition. It boasts over 26,000 signatures and is shown to every artist scheduled to perform in Israel.

CCFP, which works to counter cultural boycotts, is comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry who believe that music and the arts promote peace, oppose cultural boycotts that single out Israel and encourage all artists to experience and see Israel for themselves. It utilizes behind-the-scenes relationships to speak with artists and their reps on a one-on-one basis to introduce them to Israel and reveal the true aims of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in order to prevent show cancelations.
 
It is now extremely urgent that our communities sign CCFP’s Anti-Boycott Petition for two key reasons:
 
1.       Jazz musicians represent a group that is most vulnerable to boycott propaganda, often leading to multiple, domino-effect cancelations. Even artists who do not support BDS may cancel due to threats and concerns for their personal safety based on a parroting of misinformation.
 
2.       The pro-BDS petition distorts the truth and paints a factually and morally inaccurate picture of Israel to 16,000 people. Prior similar petitions have never even raised half of this number, which BDS proponents will surely publicize to lend legitimacy to their cause.

SIGN THE PETITION NOW