I thought an omnibus thread about performers who are following or not following the BDS movement (that is, refusing or not refusing to play in Israel) might be useful, since there are a number of stories out right now about various performers who are either cancelling or being pressured to cancel performances in Israel.
Elvis Costello respects the BDS call and pulls out of Israeli concerts.
Only two weeks after British rock icon Elvis Costello told The Jerusalem Post that the only answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “dialogue and reconciliation,” he decided to take himself out of the equation by cancelling his two shows scheduled for June 30 and July 1 at the Caesaerea Amphitheater.
Costello posted an announcement on his Web site over the weekend explaining his decision to join the boycott of Israel. “There are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent,” he wrote.
Saying he couldn’t imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, Costello wrote that since the conflict was “actually too grave and complex to be addressed in a concert, then it is also quite impossible to simply look the other way… sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static.”