If Gil wants to go? Let him go!

He is precisely the kind of artist who the Israeli authorities would prefer didn't visit Israel.

He is not a "superstar" a "celebrity" or even a "pop star" he is Gil Scott Heron, a crackhead since long time, a purveyor of truth in the face of babylon bullshit and someone who frankly doesn't need to lectured by (shock horror) uppity white middle class western "activists".

Perhaps asking him to schedule a visit to the Occupied Territories would be a more productive gesture?

As for trying to portray him as some sort of poster boy for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa??? Get real he was involved in one anti-apartheid record (who wasn't?).

Anyone think Gil not going to Israel will effect the struggle for freedom in Palestine?? I think it would be far more incendiary if he goes there.

Is that what you'd call this group?

"In the face of decades of unrelenting oppression, Palestinian civil society has called upon supporters of the struggle for freedom and justice throughout the world to take a stand and heed our call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it recognises Palestinian rights and fully complies with international law. Many prominent international cultural figures including John Berger, Ken Loach, Arundhati Roy, Roger Waters, John Williams, among others, have declared their support for the boycott. Other renowned international artists, including Sting, Bono, Snoop Dog, Jean Luc Goddard and Joan Manuel Serrat have also heeded our call and cancelled their gigs or participation in festivals in Israel (see International Guidelines for the Academic Boycott of Israel [4])."
 http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1206

Apartheid is not something that Gil Scott Heron should be making money out of - if he was against the way that Black South Africans were controlled through IDs, then he cannot possibly accept the way that Palestinians are controlled through IDs. Especially in light of recent developments:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8631560.stm

how is depriving the people of israel from hearing gil scott heron's music going to help the palestinian's? do you have secret knowledge that he's planning on bringing them a shipment of weapons from america? if you listen to his words and look at him as individual he is as mentioned 'a crack head' and like so many of us prepared to talk about revolution but also tell others they're not revolutionaries/jumping the bandwagon while not particularly looking like a fighter him self. Don't get me wrong, i love his music and a lot of what he says, he is an articulate and conscientious thinker but calling for boycott depriving israeli's from hearing him is submitting to nationalism, why would the israeli state care if muscians like him boycotted? why persecute the citizens we need on our side for their state's actions?

"why persecute the citizens we need on our side for their state's actions?"

If not having international artists play you music is persecution, what is living with a tent because the Israelis won't allow cement in?

And when you say "our side" I presume you're referring to 'uppity white middle class western "activists" ' because you seem intent on ignoring the fact that Palestinians called for cultural boycott. Perhaps when enough 'crackheads' (who have enhanced their careers by dissing apartheid) won't play the apartheid state then the army-serving civilians will call for Gazans to be allowed to rebuild their homes.

 http://intifada-palestine.com/2010/04/israeli-military-orders-“in-breach-of-international-human-rights-law”-warns-un-special-rapporteur/

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is gravely disappointed by the announcement that well-known, progressive artist Gil Scott-Heron is due to perform in Israel on May 25. We call upon Mr. Scott-Heron, a member of United Artists Against Apartheid in the 1980’s and a featured singer on the breakthrough song 'Don’t Play Sun City’, not to play apartheid Israel.



We urge you as an influential artist, and, more importantly, as a well-known activist on issues of social justice and equality, not to perform in Israel, a state that maintains a cruel system of occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people and has been widely accused by UN experts and leading human rights organizations of committing war crimes and grave violations of human rights. Your performance in Israel would stand in stark contrast to your anti-apartheid, anti-racist record and simply be part of Israel’s attempt to 're-brand’ and whitewash its apartheid system.

Your work has been an inspiration to activists around the world who are fighting for justice alongside the Palestinian people; do not tarnish your record and this admiration by turning a blind eye to the realities of Israeli apartheid. A performance in Israel 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 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighbourhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroying Gaza’s leading university and scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians, including children, were taking shelter. This criminal assault came after months of a crippling and ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza.



The situation for Palestinians outside Gaza does not fare well either. Palestinian refugees, the majority of the Palestinian population, are not allowed to return to their homes from which they were expelled in 1948. Palestinian citizens of Israel are treated as second class citizens where rampant discrimination and differential access to services is the norm. Palestinians in the West Bank are locked in by an Apartheid wall with its connected system of Israeli-only roads, settlements and checkpoints. Literally, Palestinian areas are transformed into open air prisoners and laboratories for the latest Israeli weaponry.



If you have any doubts that the situation of Palestinians is similar to that of black South African’s under apartheid, we urge you to heed the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in a recent letter to Berkeley students wrote: “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.” [1]



In the face of decades of unrelenting oppression, Palestinian civil society has called upon supporters of the struggle for freedom and justice throughout the world to take a stand and heed our call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it recognises Palestinian rights and fully complies with international law. Many prominent international cultural figures including John Berger, Ken Loach, Arundhati Roy, Roger Waters, John Williams, among others, have declared their support for the boycott. Other renowned international artists, including Sting, Bono, Snoop Dog, Jean Luc Goddard and Joan Manuel Serrat have also heeded our call and cancelled their gigs or participation in festivals in Israel [2].



Your performance in Israel would be the equivalent to having performed in Sun City during South Africa’s Apartheid era, in violation of the international boycott unanimously endorsed by the oppressed South Africans. We hope that you will not play apartheid Israel.


[1]  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html



[2] See International Guidelines for the Academic Boycott of Israel  http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1107&key=international%20academic%20boycott

'took part in one song".. fuck off! this is the man who wrote this


Artist: Gil Scott-heron And Brian Jackson




What's the word?
Tell me brother, have you heard
from Johannesburg?
What's the word?
Sister/woman have you heard
from Johannesburg?
They tell me that our brothers over there
are defyin' the Man
We don't know for sure because the news we
get is unreliable, man
Well I hate it when the blood starts flowin'
but I'm glad to see resistance growin'
Somebody tell me what's the word?
Tell me brother, have you heard
from Johannesburg?
They tell me that our brothers over there
refuse to work in the mines,
They may not get the news but they need to know
we're on their side.
Now sometimes distance brings
misunderstanding,
but deep in my heart I'm demanding;
Somebody tell me what's the word?
Sister/woman have you heard
'bout Johannesburg?
I know that their strugglin' over there
ain't gonna free me,
but we all need to be strugglin'
if we're gonna be free
Don't you wanna be free?

Gil Scott Heron was a huge inspiration during the 80's Apartheid in South Africa and the civil rights movement generally . Its very sad the message about Apartheid Israel is not getting through to enough people in The USA and Europe at the moment.

The real power to defeat American/Israeli terror has to come from concerted grassroots and street level demonstration and activism. And Gil Scott Heron has a moral and ethical responsibilty to heed the international communities call for Solidarity across the planet in support of the Palestionian struggle for freedom.

We must not purchase Israeli products in our supermarkets.

And we must try wherever and whenever possible to persuade musical artists to think twice about what their playing in Israel says about the struggle.

Only by joing together can we defeat this state sponsored terrorism in the same way that we all helped to smash the evil of Apartheid South Africa.

Gil Scott Heron has the chance once more to be our hero again.....?