Petition for Communities Against Cultural Boycott of Israel

Dear Communities,

With your support, the Israel Action Network (IAN) continues to successfully organize and counter national campaigns of delegitimization targeted against Israel. In this regard, our attention must now turn to the realm of cultural boycotts of Israel.

IAN is working in close coordination with 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 cancellations.

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 cancellations. 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.

Please alert your communities to this troubling threat and ask them to sign CCFP’s petition and share it widely, via email and social media. We must work together to neutralize this pro-boycott petition effort, and ensure that music and artistry is used to promote peace, rather than divisively tear it down.

Thank you,


Noam


Noam Gilboord
Director of Community Strategy
JFNA/JCPA Israel Action Network