抵制还是不抵制，这是一个问题

抵制还是不抵制，这是一个问题

“抵制“这种行为真的有用吗？当双方都坚定不移地认为自己占据了道德的制高点时，我们怎么能说服对方自己才是对的？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

cannily精明的，机灵地['kænɪli]

thrall奴隶，束缚[θrɔːl]

recrimination反控告，反责[rɪˌkrɪmɪ'neɪʃn]

swanky爱出风头的，漂亮的['swæŋki]

redemptive赎回的，买回的[rɪ'demptɪv]

disruptive捣乱的，破坏性的[dɪs'rʌptɪv]

radical根本的，激进的/['rædɪkl]

rebuttal反驳，反证[rɪ'bʌtl]

To boycott, or not to boycott?（790 words）

By Jan Dalley

It has been a bitterly angry week on the cultural front. The furore began when film-maker Ken Loach launched an attack on the band Radiohead for playing in Israel, breaching the cultural boycott of the country called for by the Palestinian-led movement BDS and supported by a large number of cultural luminaries.

“Radiohead need to decide if they stand with the oppressed or the oppressor. The choice is simple,” Loach stated. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke's rather well-composed defence countered that “playing in a country isn't the same as endorsing its government” (touring the US under Trump was easily evoked as a parallel) and more, to the effect that the band wanted to cross borders rather than erect them.

Pro-Palestinian voices pitched in, musicians contributed to the wordstorm, the Israelis let out an annoying cock-a-doodle-doo of triumph, and the giant gig in Tel Aviv duly went ahead on Wednesday night.

It had, I'm sad to say, an air of déjà vu. Rows about cultural boycotts come round Iike Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Or Eid. Barely two years ago, the letters page of The Guardian received a call for boycotting Israel signed by 700 figures working in the arts, and a rebuttal from others, including Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling, who argued that such a boycott was actively unhelpful because “cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change”. The same argument as Yorke's.

Last week, too, the Arab-Israeli musician Nasreen Qadri, whom Radiohead had cannily chosen as their support act, wrote in US Newsweek that in her view “Those who call for boycott are only trying to divide us.”

So, pace Loach, the choice is far from simple. Whether or not Israel's policies deserve a boycott, it's an argument that no one can absolutely win. Camp A believes sanctions are an essential gesture of protest; Camp B holds that cultural bridge-building is a better route to change. Both sides can claim the moral high ground, but neither can be proved right because the effectiveness or undesirability of a boycott strategy is so hard to establish.

For musicians, though, there's a third option: you couldn't care less about the politics, only about the music. This was the basis on which Paul Simon, in thrall to the African music he had just discovered, landed himself in the mother of all boycott rows in 1986. By making his Graceland album with black musicians in apartheid South Africa, he flouted both the fierce UN boycott on cultural links with the country and South Africa's apartheid laws. He was accused of all sorts, from all sides, including de haut en bas colonial attitudes and unfair appropriation of other people's music.

Recriminations got even nastier when it transpired that singer Linda Ronstadt, a guest on the album, had played the (musically) notorious Sun City, a swanky whites-only resort within an area into which blacks were forcibly resettled. Outrage against big-money gigs at the resort, and the musicians who accepted them, had prompted the 1985 protest song “Sun City”, recorded by a line-up including such big names as Pete Townshend.

It's ironic, perhaps, that if a similar protest track were made now, it would have to go ahead without Madonna, Justin Bieber, Leonard Cohen, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Nick Cave and the dozens more who have recently played, or are about to play, Tel Aviv.

Graceland was a moral hornets' nest. But to me Paul Simon, though far from perfect, was a hero for reasons — social, political, human, musical — too numerous to explore here. In the same way, western bands who made it to the Soviet bloc at about the same time — Iron Maiden first, in 1984; three years later Billy Joel, then others — were seen as heroes. I never heard any of them accused of complicity with Soviet authorities: quite the opposite. But in those days we believed in the disruptive, even redemptive, power of rock music. As did the repressive regimes who tried so hard to ban it. Rock and pop were, let's face it, far less commercialised, globalised, co-opted into brand culture, tourism and fashion. Back then they were a weapon of dissent; now, a sticking plaster.

During all this mud-slinging, one brave attempt at dissolving borders has been in my mind. The West-Eastern Divan orchestra, set up 18 years ago by the late Edward Said (a Palestinian) and Daniel Barenboim (an Argentine-Israeli, also a citizen of Palestine and Spain), brings together Palestinian, Israeli and other Arab players in a deliberate cultural intervention.

One country where the orchestra has never played is Israel. Could it possibly be that a little bit of Ravel, if played by the “wrong” people, is now more disruptive and radical than the thundering of Radiohead?