There are rules of engagement. The killing of non-combatants is unacceptable, no matter the perpetrators, no matter the cause.

What we intend to explore here is the nature of innocence and accountability. That we do not have a direct hand in the shedding of blood is not de facto proof of our purity. Our opportunities to support or otherwise countenance abhorrent villainy are myriad, and there is cultural precedent for holding others accountable for doing so.

Recently, a number of Harvard students made plain their support for the people of Palestine in a written statement. They were almost immediately sanctioned, doxxed, and blacklisted. These are life-changing social consequences in retaliation against young people speaking their conscience, and these consequences are readily endorsed by people in power. While unfortunate for these students, we now have a cultural precedent whereby the rest of us may call out individuals and organizations that we take to be bad actors.

We’re going to do that here.

A Legitimate Military Target

The Israel Edition Supernova psytrance music festival was staged by Tel Aviv-based Tribe of Nova in collaboration with Brazil’s Universo Parellelo. The location was just outside Kibbutz Re’im, a secular Zionist commune that also happens to enclose a military outpost and is the location of Isralaser, a laser cutting facility protected by a battery of tanks.

Why the protection?

Because Isralaser’s products are meant largely for Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Isralaser was also contracted by the United States to provide hardening and shielding equipment the duration of the Iraqi campaign (2007-12). This was the intended target of the invading militants, and their attack coincided with the end of the Jewish Sukkot holiday period.

The holiday may explain the lack of Israeli vigilance that allowed for what has been described as the single most violent act perpetrated against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, but there are certainly other possibilities.

Sandwiching your dance party in the no-man’s land between a military outpost and the Gaza border is a pretty awful idea, although this was not the original plan. Tribe of Nova switched the festival site from an undisclosed location in southern Israel only two days prior for reasons that are unclear.

Because we know that a number of these militants did indeed breach the fortifications of Kibbutz Re’im, we can say with certainty that terrorizing festival-goers was not their sole aim. If so, there would have been no need to introduce complexity and the possibility of militant casualties by pushing through to a military target. It would have been far easier restricting the operation to harassing, murdering, and kidnapping unarmed civilians than to intentionally engage the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Although we cannot state this with any certainty, it seems most probable that the festival became a frenzied and opportunistic free-for-all stumbled into and capitalized upon by the militants on their way to Kibbutz Re’im, a possibility that does not excuse the taking of civilian lives. We hold them, but not only them, accountable.

The music festival organizers may not have known that a battle was set to break out in their immediate area, but there are a few things that both they and the participants did know and we believe they should absolutely be condemned.

The Wrong Message in the Wrong Place

Universo Parellelo is based in Brazil. They’ve been organizing electronic music festivals for the last 23 years, primarily in Brazil. Shockingly, nowhere on their website (at the time of this writing) is there any statement of condolence, apology, or acknowledgement of recent events. There are, however, links to buy tickets for their December event.

The show must go on.

As can be readily ascertained from the name of the initiative, the festival organizers feel a responsibility to create, with the help of music and drugs, a “parallel universe,” where the “turmoil of these modern times” can be left behind.

. . . to allow the flourishing of a great collective organism that, for eight days, will radiate the energy of freedom, delight, encounter and celebration throughout the planet. And in these eight days of celebration, let us all be complicit in building an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance.

Of creativity and boldness and a deep respect for nature, utopia is the key and the secret.

The true gateway to an authentic parallel universe.

https://universoparalello.org

We agree.

Universo Parallelo and Tribe of Nova are indeed complicit.

Inviting restless suburbanites to drop acid and celebrate utopia by dancing adjacent to what humanitarian organizations unanimously describe as the world’s largest open-air prison is problematic. To “radiate the energy” of freedoms and delights that are daily denied the people of Gaza living in squalor on just the other side of a wall three miles from the party is a taunting kick to the heart that thoroughly unravels any narrative that situates this unconscionable display as a “festival of peace and love.”

These are spit-on-your-grave levels of depravity that would inspire Palestinian Americans to organize a week-long dabke festival outside the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum, except that they would never.

The entire enterprise is an exercise in escapism, a manufactured and monetized delusion that practically requires the use of mind-bending psychedelics. Rather than acknowledge and challenge the realities of the Israeli apartheid regime, the policies of which are in wild contravention to the utopian ideals of the EDM community, Tribe of Nova turns up the bass and invites the mushroom-addled kids to embrace the hypocrisy.

Tribe of Nova and all of those who showed up to party just outside a refugee ghetto should absolutely be held responsible for their negligent insensitivity in thinking this was a good idea.

In no way does our suggestion that they be held accountable excuse the killing and kidnapping of civilians by an armed militia. We rightfully put down the dog that bites, but what of those who kick and cajole the dog in the first place?

The New York Times quotes a 26 year-old attendee stating that the trance music scene allows her and others, “to disconnect your mind from all the tension in Israel.”

Nope.

You’re not allowed.

None of us is.

The End of Innocence?

Large scale anti-apartheid initiatives like the BDS Movement have been educating us for years about the need for a demonstrative cultural boycott of the Israeli regime. People who choose to live in Occupied Palestine, establish businesses, pay taxes, throw concerts, party, and otherwise shore up the apartheid infrastructure should be sanctioned until they wake up and demand that the Israeli war machine stand down.

It is hardly a wonder that Tribe of Nova would be allowed to set up their festival right outside of the Isralaser military outpost.

The Israeli regime functions best when their people are in a trance.