YouTube Removes Video Asking Alicia Keys To Cancel Concert in Israel
Image by Getty Images
YouTube removed a video calling on Alicia Keys to cancel a concert in Tel Aviv.
Set to Keys’ popular song “This Girl is on Fire,” the video was removed on Monday, according to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
The video, “Alicia Keys, Come Together with Your Sisters, Boycott Apartheid,” was removed, a notification by YouTube said, due to a copyright infringement claim by “Alicia Keys c/o Ziffren Brittenheim LLP.”
It showed Palestinian performance and visual artist Rana Hamadeh standing on an Israeli military vehicle waving a Palestinian flag.
“It is enough that we face physical and emotional violence and restrictions on our daily lives. But now we are also being silenced on the internet,” Hamadeh said in a statement distributed by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. “I think if Alicia Keys understood the call to boycott, she would agree to honor it.”
Keys affirmed her decision to play in Israel in an interview published last month in The New York Times. She has been under pressure to cancel the July 4 concert.
The appeal to Keys to boycott Israel came first from Alice Walker in an open letter posted on the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s website. Calls also came from Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and numerous pro-Palestinian organizations.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
