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MEDIA CONTACT: info@adalahny.org

October 29, New York, NY – Outside Manhattan’s normally staid Lincoln Center cultural complex tonight, 50 New Yorkers delivered a clear message rejecting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s (IPO) deliberate use of art to whitewash Israel’s systematic and brutal repression of the rights of the Palestinian people. The IPO, which was holding a fundraising concert, calls itself “Israel’s musical ambassador throughout the country and the world” and helps to project a positive image of Israel, diverting attention from Israel’s human rights abuses, as part of the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” initiative.

Many of the well-dressed patrons, who had paid up to $5000 apiece for tickets to the IPO concert at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, looked disturbed to encounter a radical marching band, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra (RMO), and a crowd of protesters with chants that included, “Your orchestra is classy, your piano is so grand, we’d love to have you play for us when you stop stealing land;” and “Oboe, trumpet and bassoon, apartheid is out of tune.”

Other passers-by read the literature being distributed by protesters and, in some cases, took up signs and joined the demonstration. Eight dancers in a second floor Alice Tully Hall studio with floor to ceiling glass windows overlooking the protest, inspired by the RMO’s renditions of “Which Side Are You On?” and “We Shall Not Be Moved,” treated the crowd to an impromptu dance performance.

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October 27, New York, NY – Over 30 New York human rights advocates protested outside the performance of Israeli musician Idan Raichel at the Beacon Theatre this evening, calling Raichel “a self-proclaimed propagandist for the Israeli government” and its brutal, apartheid policies towards the Palestinian people. The peaceful, spirited protest of chanting and singing was met by hostility and racism from many concert-goers.

A number of Raichel’s fans began shouting obscenities and making vulgar gestures at the protesters, in two cases mocking the religious garb (video) some Muslim women wear (the headscarf, or hijab). One aggressive male fan repeatedly told a female protest chant leader, “You should die!” Another went out of his way to walk up to two female protesters and toss a lit cigarette between them. In contrast, one passer-by read an explanatory flier and then joined the protesters, adding her voice to chants such as, “Voice of peace? That’s a lie! Idan plays while people die,” and “Musicians must take a stand, no excuse for stealing land.”

MEDIA CONTACT: info@adalahny.org

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New York, NY, October 22 – Human rights advocates today added to revelations reported in The Jewish Daily Forward this week about the new Hollywood entertainment industry group Creative Community for Peace (CCFP). CCFP campaigns against a cultural boycott of Israel, and claims to oppose the politicization of art. But The Forward revealed this week that CCFP, not itself a nonprofit, operates under the aegis of the long-established US nonprofit StandWithUs (SWU) which is “widely perceived as being on the far right of the pro-Israel spectrum.” The Forward also shows that CCFP shares some of SWU's right-wing positions, though CCFP espouses goals of “peace” and “freedom of expression.” SWU, legally registered under the name Israel Emergency Alliance (IEA), regularly boasts of its endorsement by and support to the Israeli government.

CCFP’s cofounder, music executive David Renzer, tried to distance the group from SWU, telling The Forward that CCFP has “always operated independently” of SWU, and asserting, “there is no day-to-day relationship” with SWU. But according to Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, David Renzer is married to the cofounder and president of SWU Esther Renzer; another CCFP co-founder, Ran Geffen-Lifshitz, is on the board of StandWithUs Israel; CCFP’s Director Lana Melman appears to be based in the long-established SWU office in LA as she can be reached by phone via the SWU switchboard there; and CCFP and SWU held a strategizing session together with Israeli government officials to shape CCFP’s activities. Still, SWU and CCFP have gone to lengths to camouflage their interrelationship, even quietly registering StandWithUs and Creative Community for Peace with the LA County Clerk in 2010 as “fictitious business names” for the registered nonprofit Israel Emergency Alliance (Scanned file available on request).