Letter to Lara Fabian

[The following letter was sent to the artist Lara Fabian on 15 January 2012 by the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of "Israel" in Lebanon.] 

Beirut, 15 January 2012

Dear Ms. Lara Fabian,

Greetings from Beirut.

You have declared your full support for Israel. You have sung on its sixtieth "anniversary," which means sixty (by now sixty four) years of ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, apartheid, colonial settlements, and denial of the rights of millions of Palestinian refugees, including about four hundred thousand in Lebanon alone, to go home. You have sung a Zionist song in Hebrew and declared your "love" for Israel when you finished singing it in Paris, Trocadero, 25 May 2008).

While you were celebrating Israel’s “anniversary”, leading international artists and cultural figures of the caliber of Augusto Boal, Mahmoud Darwish, Judith Butler, Andre Brink, Nigel Kennedy, among many others, signed a statement titled “No Reason to Celebrate!” It appeared in the International Herald Tribune on 8 May 2008 and stated:

“There is no reason to celebrate! Israel at 60 is a state that is still denying Palestinian refugee their UN-sanctioned rights, simply because they are “non-Jews”. It is still illegally occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It is still persistently and grossly breaching international law and infringing fundamental human rights with impunity afforded to it through munificent US and European economic, diplomatic and political support. It is still treating its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalized discrimination. In short, celebrating 'Israel at 60' is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves to the haunting tune of lingering dispossession and multi-faceted injustice.”

More recently, heeding the virtually consensus-supported Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel, tens of artists and musicians have declared their unwillingness to play in Israel just as they had done with apartheid South Africa. Tel Aviv is increasingly being viewed today as Sun City was in the 1980s. Roger Waters, Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, Natasha Atlas, Gil-Scott Heron, The Pixies, Gorillaz, Klaxons, Vanessa Paradis, and Snoop Dogg, are some of many who took a moral stand and refused to allow their art and names to be used to whitewash Israel’s violations of human rights.

You, on the contrary, chose, time and again, to entertain apartheid, crime, and occupation in Israel and to further vow your “love” for it.

For that, and in line with our right to freedom of expression in Lebanon, we pledge to boycott your event in Casino du Liban on 14 February and 15 February 2012. We will call on all the Lebanese and Palestinians in Lebanon to boycott your shows; we will also urge our Algerian and Moroccan brothers and sisters to do the same.

Singing for love and peace on Valentine's Day contradicts your unequivocal support for apartheid and colonization. Our country, Lebanon, is, to this very day, subject to daily Israeli infringement on its sovereignty. Tens of thousands of Lebanese have been murdered thanks to Israeli bombardment and shelling since its inception (“independence”!) in 1948. Furthermore, millions of cluster bombs are still implanted in southern Lebanon, causing the daily death and injury of peasants and children.

Lara Fabian, the message of love should not be smeared with blood. Boycott Israel; be on the right side of history!

Campaign to Boycott Supporters of “Israel” in Lebanon