The Rototom Sunsplash Reggae Festival in Spain has apologized for having dropped the Jewish American singer Matisyahu from its program.
Matisyahu had been scheduled to perform at the Valencia-based festival on August 22, but was disinvited when he declined to endorse Palestinian statehood.
Pressure was brought to bear on the festival — an advocate of peace, equality, human rights and social justice — by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. BDS activists in Valencia had accused Matisyahu, a rapper who has performed in Israel on many occasions, of being a “Zionist” and a defender of a state that “practices apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
By all accounts, Matisyahu’s fellow performers supposedly did not wish to be associated with an artist who’s regarded as representing Israel.
Organizers gave Matisyahu — an American Jew who had been identified with the Chabad brand of Orthodox Judaism — an ultimatum. Sign a statement endorsing Palestinian statehood, or leave our hallowed festival.
Understandably insulted by its high-handedness, Matisyahu pulled out.
Matisyahu was right to withdraw. His honor and dignity were at stake.
The festival, an ardent supporter of Palestinian rights, carries a lengthy video on its official website extolling the rights of the Palestinians and denouncing Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip last summer. Festival organizers are entitled to their pro-Palestinian stance, however grotesquely one-sided it is, but they had no right whatsoever to insult and bar a performer on the basis of his political views or ethnic identity.
Matisyahu’s exclusion was at once stupid, racist and Orwellian.
In its infinite wisdom, the Thought Police at the festival’s Ministry of Truth laid down suffocating political parameters that no self-respecting performer could possibly accept.
The Thought Police decreed that performers must abide by certain political beliefs, that “Zionists” are beyond the pale and that Israel had no right to defend itself in 2014 when Hamas rockets rained down on its residential neighborhoods.
The Thought Police were not remotely interested in the fact that Hamas had committed war crimes in firing rockets at purely civilian targets in Israel.
By excluding Matisyahu, the festival was guilty of peddling reactionary ideas and notions that would have been hailed in Stalinist Russia and China during its stifling Cultural Revolution. Myopically, the festival conflated arts with politics and stumbled into a black hole from which it has now crawled out.
Under pressure from the Spanish government, the publicly-funded festival recognized its appalling mistake, issued a “sincere” apology and reinvited Matisyahu.
Nothing less would have been acceptable.