Nick Cave, the anti-BDS rocker, back in Israel
The legendary Australian singer will perform in Rishon Lezion on August 23, despite calls for boycott
For the many Israeli fans of legendary singer Nick Cave and his band “The Bad Seeds,” the ordeal is finally coming to an end…
The group was to perform at the Bloomfield stadium in Israel’s coastal city of Tel Aviv in June 2020, but Covid got the better of the concert – which was already almost sold out – plunging aficionados into a deep depression.
The show's Israeli producer, Shuki Weiss, finally managed to postpone the show to August 23 of this year and move its setting to Rishon Lezion's Live Park. With a larger capacity, Weiss is confident that audiences will come to the venue in large numbers to enjoy the poetic and mythical songs of the Australian crooner.
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Concerns of further cancellation arose last May when Cave lost a second son, Jethro, at the age of 31, which came after the accidental death of his first child, Arthur, seven years ago.
But despite the tragedy, the singer kept his commitment and will take the stage next week to the delight of his fans.
Cave and his band thus sign their return to Israel, after two memorable concerts in Tel Aviv in 2017. Many spectators had no hesitation in deeming the show as "one of the best ever organized by a foreign artist in Israel.”
Expectations are high.
The Israeli public should also give Cave and his band a more-than-warm welcome after the author of the sensual "When the Wild Roses Grow" refused to cancel his concert in the Jewish state, despite pressure from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The anti-Israel organization often lambasted the Australian singer for his refusal to boycott Israel.
During his visit in 2017, Cave expressed his affection for the Jewish state and stressed that the boycott of artists did not solve anything. He then affirmed loud and clear his choice to "oppose those who try to scare artists away and reduce them to silence.”
"Whatever the pros and cons of official Israeli action in the disputed territories, Israel is a real, vibrant, functioning democracy. I am here because I love Israel and because it is important for me to say that a musician cannot be silenced. In a way, I am here because of the BDS movement," he said.
While the emblematic Australian singer has never supported Israeli policy in the West Bank and has supported Palestinians by participating in several events aimed at raising funds for their schools, he never yielded to the boycott sirens, seeing it as a "destructive and reducing" approach.
Cave thus took the opposite view of many artists who ended up canceling their concerts in Israel under the pressure of BDS, like Lana Del Rey or Lorde.
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He is also at odds with the 600 musicians who have called on artists not to hold concerts in Israel, in response to the war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas last year, on the pretext that the "Israeli government is engaged in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population."
More recently, the singer came to the defense of Israeli democracy, amid criticism that he gave up performing in Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, but maintained his concert in Rishon Lezion.
Cave then explained that the war in Ukraine could not be compared to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Russia's invasion of Ukraine is simply not the same as the current conflict between Israel and Palestine. One is a brutal and unprovoked attack of one state by another, in the hope to overhaul the entire security structure of Europe. The other is a deeply complex conflict between two nations,” he replied last month to a Turkish fan who challenged him on the subject.
It is not the many Israeli fans who will complain about his upcoming show. Next week, they will finally be able to commune with their idol, and sing along to the hits of the rock veteran, without politics interfering, in an evening that will hopefully be grandiose.
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