On the afternoon of Sunday, February 3, New York's Carnegie Hall will host an outrageously expensive fundraising brunch for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO), followed by an IPO concert performance. Tickets for the IPO brunch start at $1000.
As the IPO’s wealthy supporters attend a lavish brunch inside to sustain its whitewashing of Israeli apartheid, we’ll be outside sustaining our love of justice with a small Palestinian brunch and music for liberation with the big freedom sounds of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra.
The IPO is no apolitical cultural institution. An official cultural ambassador for Israel, the IPO proudly proclaims that it "represent[s] the State of Israel across the world,” and says that “[T]he goodwill created by these tours…is of enormous value to the State of Israel.”
While the IPO performs as part of the Brand Israel PR initiative, Israel systematically deprives Palestinians of their basic rights, whether they live under Israeli military occupation, as unequal citizens in Israel, or as refugees, denied their right of return to their homeland.
Our protest responds to the Palestinian civil society call to boycott cultural institutions like the IPO that are complicit in sustaining Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people.