A letter to Beyonce from a Palestinian

Dear Beyonce,

I watched your Super Bowl performance last Sunday.  I heard your words.  I was excited. Ecstatic. Encouraged. I watched pundits on cable news networks talk about how you were “making a statement.”  Someone even said you were being “unapologetically black.” I loved it.

Much to my surprise, however, your contentious performance at our nation’s biggest sporting event wouldn’t be the most controversial thing you’d do this week.

Yesterday, the Times of Israel reported that you’ll be performing in Tel Aviv in August. Twice. At first, I hoped it was a rumor, perhaps some sort of smear directed at you after your Super Bowl saga. Sadly, it’s all too real.

So, Beyonce, Bey, habibti, I’m asking you not to do it.  Israel doesn’t wear a halo.  She’s a naughty girl. She doesn’t even pay her own bills, bills, bills.  Actually, we Americans do, to the tune of almost $250 billion over the years.  That should make you lose your breath.

I know you’re not doing it for the money.  You’re an independent woman. So I have to ask you:

Beyonce, are you crazy in love with Israel?

Are you crazy in love with a nation that has dispossessed and disenfranchised millions of native Palestinians, illegally settling their land, depriving them of the most basic of political rights, and silencing their narrative?

Are you crazy in love with a nation that has ignored more United Nations Security Council resolutions than any other?

Are you crazy in love with a nation that will let you travel across the world to perform in Tel Aviv, but restricts the movements of millions of Palestinians, through the use of hundreds of checkpoints?

I don’t want to get into the murderous wars in Gaza that have killed thousands of civilians, many of them defenseless children.  But I will tell you that the almost 2 million Palestinians who live there, under a blockade, less than an hour from Tel Aviv, have no hope of coming to see you. Crazy, right?

Are you crazy in love with a nation that has routinely discriminated against black individuals, destroying blood donated by Ethiopian Jews, injecting their women with contraceptives without their consent, and expelling thousands of African asylum-seekers (whom Israel labeled “infiltrators”)?

Are you crazy in love with Israel? Because Angela Davis, Cornel West, & Talib Kweli definitely aren’t.  And you know who else wasn’t?  The one and only Nelson Mandela.  Do you remember how you performed at a benefit concert organized by him back in 2003? Or how Israel staunchly supported the South African apartheid regime?  Or how Israeli leaders skipped his funeral?

Mr. Mandela said a couple things about us:

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
“My view is that talk of peace remains hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab lands.”

Well, we’re still not free. And we’re still occupied.

Beyonce, walk with us.  Boycott. Divestment. Sanctions.  Say our name. #BDS.

I’m asking you to stand with us Palestinians, the survivors of efforts to erase us and our narrative from the face of the earth. We are trying to send Israel a message.  The same message the world sent to South Africa.  Actually, I think I know the perfect words to use.  Until it cleans up its act, we should all tell Israel the same thing:

To the left, to the left, everything you own in the box to the left.

Thanks,
A Palestinian

About Amer Zahr 181 Articles
Amer Zahr is a Palestinian American comedian, writer, professor and speaker living in Dearborn, Michigan. He is also the editor of "The Civil Arab."

34 Comments

  1. Amazing Amer one of your best. I believe the same should be sent to Sprinstien after all he claims to be the progressive one!

  2. This is the most ridiculous drivel ever written. First of all, Amer, you have to check your facts rather than indiscriminately believe all the propaganda you read or hear on Al Jazeera or somehow get from Hamas. It’s the uneducated, brainless dopes like you that will forever cause strife in the mid-east, mainly to the detriment of the very “Palestinians” you purport to support. Perhaps you should do something productive with your time, like go to school and obtain a degree in productive field so that you can give back to humanity rather than incite violence, strife, and hatred.

      • Well, answer these these three three questions and you’ll have some facts that not even the US drive-by and ignore most international stories news media has ignored:

        1. Who shoots missiles first into civilian areas mere days or hours after the Israelis try to have a cessation of hostilities?

        2. Who has intentionally based military units in UN schools?

        3. Who has boarded civilian public transport buses and tried to shoot every civilian on board?

  3. You’re a very creative writer. It’s a shame your morals don’t match your creativity, since nearly everything you wrote was a vile collection of half-truths and lies. In the future, please limit your creative writing to lighter topics. This is too serious an issue for your lying propaganda to possibly poison the minds of some unsuspecting reader who isn’t as knowledgable about the situation as I am.

  4. This is such bullshit. “Us Palestinians… survivors of efforts to erase us …from the face of the earth…”
    If that is so, how did 600,000 displaced persons of 1948-9 become 5.5 million so-called “refugees” today? How is it that the health, wealth and living conditions of Arabs in the former Palestine is far better than those of the 100s of millions of Arabs in the neighbouring region?
    Nasty, genocidal Isrsel must be the most incompetent perpetrator of “genocide” that the earth has ever seen.
    Have you been smoking something?

  5. I am a proud Israeli women ! I have served my country and my grandchildren will do so because of the terrorism .
    What are you taking about ??????????????!
    What facts do you know ?
    were its OK and legitimate to get up in the morning and stab innocent people ?

    • Just shut up women you trynna take peoples countrie while god created u without land.jews the only people that doesnt have their own land.so you guys dont know where u belong….
      Freelandforpalestine#

  6. Your Muslim terrorists are murdering countless thousands of innocent Christians, Yazidi, & other Muslims in the name of that mass murdering pedophile that you have the audacity to call a prophet of God. Since 1948, over 11 million Muslims have died in violent conflict in the Middle East, over 90% of whom died at the hands of other Muslims, so quit worrying about Israel, because truth told, Muslims over there are their own worst enemy.

  7. Really, you want her to take a stand for your battles? Who among you Palestinians even care about what happens to those for whom she made her statement? Stand for your own…carry your own weight…We have to carry ours even from the baggage we have received from mostly all of you in the Middle East.

  8. Hey Mrs Beyoncé,
    Go to Tel Aviv! See the Muslims that live in her.
    See how they are proud and free. They go universities, hold positions in the government, are doctors and lawyers, see the truth.
    Then ask your pen pal, what crimes are they talking about other than the fabrications and the lies told to them by their own leaders.
    By the way Beyoncé, if you do happen to visit that side, the so called oppressed side, please make sure to take an army with you, because if they see you walk with another man or alone or dressed the way you do with the beauty of a Nubian princess that the Good G-D has given you, well they’re probably going to kill you and call you a whore: just sayin.

  9. Amer Zahr: All that muslim inbreeding must have cost you double digit IQ points…I would suggest that you actually study history and discover who occupied Palestine 2000 years ago….and where jews actually originated…You, sir…are an idiot…

  10. Amer Zahr, I feel sorry for you. You have deceived yourself. BDS is a joke, and you thinking children are hurt, when your rockets come from your homes, schools, UN hospitals, and when l warns of a strike HAMAS sends your precious children and women to the roof tops. You are empty of compassion, and you fill this article w/propaganda!

  11. Jews wans all muslims gone –
    Muslims just want to live in peace

    Beyonce can do what she wants its better for muslims not to listen to music anyway and listen to quran :-)

    Peace to the world filled with love

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