Elvis Costello Snubs Israel

Excerpt:   When Elvis Costello this week canceled two upcoming shows in Israel, Twitter lit up with praise and condemnation.   And surprise.   Just two weeks earlier, the singer-songwriter had said he was against a cultural boycott: “The people who call for a boycott of Israel own the narrow view that performing there must be about profit and endorsing the hawkish policy of the government,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “It’s like never appearing in the U.S. because you didn’t like Bush’s policies or boycotting England because of Margaret Thatcher.”   So what brought about Costello’s change of heart?   This effort to sever ties with Israel only reinforces ultra-nationalistic and hawkish forces within Israeli society, who perceive the world as innately hostile to the Jewish state.   By his own account, the musician searched his soul. And although he said he understood the complexity of the issues involved, his decision boiled down to a matter of “instinct and conscience.”   “It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances,” Costello wrote in a letter on his website. “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.”