An Appeal to Stevie Wonder: Don’t Support Apartheid

Stevie Wonder is scheduled to
perform in concert for the Israeli
military on Dec. 6

A spokesperson for the Israeli military poses in brown-face with the words "Obama style"

Rhythm and Blues legend Stevie Wonder performing in a benefit concert for the murderous, racist Israeli military machine? It hardly seems possible. Yet when I opened up an email today, that indeed is what I read. At first I couldn’t believe it, but then I did some checking around. Sure enough, if you click here, this is what you will find:

Stevie Wonder is set to perform at the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces annual gala at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles on December 6.  Wonder is scheduled to headline the event, which raises millions of dollars annually to support the Israeli Defense Forces.  The event is the largest held yearly in support of the IDF across the world.

The event is set to be hosted by Cheryl and Haim Saban and will be attended by more than 1,000 members of the Los Angeles Jewish community.

Other leading artists who have performed at the “annual gala” in the past include Barbara Streisand and Andrea Bocelli, the article goes on to inform us. A similar story can also be found at YNet.

The irony here is that Wonder wrote and recorded—37 years ago—one of the truly all-time great songs against racism: “Living for the City,” and people are shaking their heads in—well, wonder—so to speak. “Stevie Wonder has come under fire for agreeing to perform at the 2012 western region gala for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces,” reports YourBlackWorld.net. The story goes on to question “whether Wonder should have added his name to the IDF event, given atrocities Israel has committed against the Palestinian people.”

Also a petition has been set up at Change.org calling on Wonder to withdraw from the event.

But there is perhaps an even more staggering irony here: In what Israeli officials must regard as appalling timing, almost the same day of the announcement of Wonder’s headlining the event in Los Angeles, came the news that IDF spokesman Sacha Dratwa had posted a photo of himself posing in brown-face with the words “Obama style.” The story has been reported at Al Akhbar as well as at ABC News. Here’s a bit from the Al-Akhbar report:

For all its high-tech industries and self-promotion as a western-style democracy, Israeli public officials apparently still enjoy forms of entertainment that went out of fashion in the US with the end of the Jim Crow era.

A photo uploaded on September 29 to the Facebook profile of the head of the IDF’s social media unit depicts the lieutenant posing with brown mud on his face under the caption: “Obama style.”

Until today, when the photo began to circulate outside of Israeli circles, none of Dratwa’s friends or any of the 1,639 subscribers appeared to have expressed misgivings about the photo.

Al-Akhbar describes Dratwa as the Israeli Army’s “social media guru,” and reports, “Dratwa is in charge of the IDF’s Facebook, Twitter, as well as the widely disparaged Instagram campaign during the recent attacks on Gaza.” A somewhat updated story from Al Akhbar is also available here. Both articles, in their entirety, are worth a read, but let’s get back to the issue of Stevie Wonder. The following appeal to Wonder has been posted at the Quagmire reader list:

Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace):

One of the most socially conscious artists on the block, Stevie Wonder, is reportedly scheduled to perform in support of the IDF?! Please say it ain't so!!!

A few years back I had an opportunity to engage another socially committed artist by the name of Danny Glover, after he helped lead a protest demonstration outside of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC, regarding the Darfur crisis. I have a lot of respect for Glover as a socially committed artist, and my feeling was that if he could hear another perspective on that crisis, it might affect how he addressed it. (At the time he was repeating the mantra that a deliberate Sudanese government orchestrated  "genocide" was taking place in Darfur.)

He and I had a brief conversation on the issue, and before it ended, I handed him a copy of our book titled "Target Sudan: What's Really Behind the Crisis in Darfur." The next time I heard him on the radio speaking about the issue (if I remember correctly, it was the NPR affiliate in DC - WAMU), not only did he not use that unjustifiably loaded term to describe the political crisis, but when the host of the show introduced it, Glover gave a far more measured and accurate response.

It shows what can happen when us common folk make an effort to reach out to those who some might view as untouchable :).! I don't have the ability to reach out and touch Stevie Wonder personally, but through the wonders of the Internet/Cyberspace it may be possible that I can reach out and touch someone who has the power to reach out and touch Mr. Wonder. If so, please pass this on.


Dear Mr. Stevie Wonder:

I pray this finds you and yours well. I begin with a heartfelt confession. You have long been one of my favorite artists, and, in my humble opinion, one of the most progressive and socially-conscious poetic truth tellers of our time. It is for this reason I felt the need to reach out to you, after learning that you are scheduled to perform in support of one of the most brutal and unrepentant terrorist organizations in the world - the so-called Israeli Defense Forces!

Upon hearing this, it immediately brought to mind the power of propaganda; because the IDF and Stevie Wonder don't even belong in the same sentence; it's like oil and water, the two just don't mix. I don't know how this arrangement came about, and it's not really my business. But I do know this: if the December 6 benefit concert in LA (for the IDF, God forbid!) does take place, with you headlining it, this will be an enormous public relations coup for the Zionist-Apartheid State of Israel, and a serious blow to the stellar image of the internationally renowned Stevie Wonder.

A great man (a martyr for the cause of truth and justice) who you have paid tribute to in song, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said this about the African American experience:

“Being a Negro in America is not a comfortable experience. It means being part of the company of the bruised, the battered, the scarred, and the defeated. Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.

“Being a Negro in America means listening to suburban politicians talk eloquently against public housing, while arguing in the same breath that they are not racists. It means being harried by day and haunted by night by a nagging sense of nobodiness, and constantly fighting to be saved from the poison of bitterness. It means the ache and anguish of living in so many situations where hopes unborn have died.”

Mr. Wonder, these words are an accurate description of the day to day existence of the Palestinian people suffering under the yoke of Zionist-Apartheid in the "Holy Land." I'm certain that if Dr. King were alive today, seeing what Zionist Jews do to a people who's existence today is much like it was for the average African American decades ago, he would condemn it! This is why you must re-think your decision to pay tribute - and lend material support - to an organization that was established for the sole purpose of enforcing this madness!

As the central character in White South African Alan Paton's award winning book,  Cry The Beloved Country, correctly opined:"I shall no longer ask myself if this or that is expedient; only if it is right. I do it not because I am noble or unselfish; but because life slips away; and I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie. I do it because I can no longer aspire to the highest with one part of myself, yet deny it with the other."

Finally, Mr. Wonder, I'm including a link to a video that graphically reveals what the IDF has been organized to defend:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPWi6x8HshM&sns=em

May God bless you to make the right decision.

With warm regards,

Mauri' Saalakhan
Director of Operations
The Peace Thru Justice Foundation


A final thought (to my Muslim brethren especially). By the grace of ALLAH, we have a large network of people that receive our releases around the world. I know that there are a number of artists (some prominent in the industry), in New York and on the West Coast, who see many of our releases - either directly, or through others. If you are someone (or you know someone) who has direct contact with Stevie Wonder - or indirect contact through his manager, his publicist, or a secretary - please get this to him. I believe he is an artist who is capable of putting principle before profit. (Surely ALLAH know best.)

If the show goes on as planned, there should be a MASSIVE PROTEST outside the venue on Thursday, December 6, so that the message goes out loud and clear that the despicable IDF will NOT come to America and raise money in capitulatory silence!

In the struggle for peace thru justice,

MS

Stevie Wonder performing “Living for the City,” circa 1974:



By the way, Your Black World has also posted an article on the Sacha Dratwa controversy:

The head of the IDF’s social media unit, lieutenant Sacha Dratwa, enjoys more than Twitter and Facebook. Apparently, he’s also into some good ‘ol fashioned Jim Crow styled blackface as well…

Dratwa’s behavior may come as a shock to some, but it shouldn’t. There have been indications in the past that a number of Israelis harbor racist views toward black and brown people.

In June of this year, Israel began a massive deportation of African migrants who said they were treated “like animals” during the process.

Read the full article here.

At this point all I can do is reiterate what I quoted above about the upcoming event in Los Angeles raising “millions of dollars annually” to support the Israeli military. Hopefully Stevie Wonder will educate himself on these crucial issues and follow his conscience.


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