Pounding on Keys

HI, ALICIA:

How's it going, girl?

Most of your millions of fans don't know that Palestine's bag-o'-lies Boycott, Divestment and Sanction hate crew is targeting you because of your July Fourth concert in Tel Aviv, part of your worldwide "Set the World on Fire" tour.

The BDS festival of hate - I say BDS stands for Bigoted Double Standard - started an online petition to get you to pull the plug on your concert in the Middle East's only functioning democracy. It's attracted a few thousand signatures from knotheads who hear the word "apartheid" used on Israel, assume it is true and then start yelling. Just as some people hear "Muslim" used on Barack Obama and start yelling. BDS is one part of what Secretary of State John Kerry calls a larger "insidious campaign to de-legitimize Israel."

With courage, you have said, "Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show."

I believe you, but not BDS. So many lies - big lies, bad lies, white lies, half-lies and bald-faced lies.

Such as: The concert theater will be "segregated."

Alicia, when you look into that audience, you will see faces varying from paper-white to ink-black, because Israelis come in all colors. What's not so visible is that the audience will be made up of Jews and Christians and Muslims (unless they fear retaliation from their homicidal brothers).

BDS won't tell you that more than 20 percent of Israelis are not Jewish. They are Arab, plus a smaller number of Christians.

The big, continuing lie is that Israel is "apartheid," a word that jerkwad Jimmy Carter used in the title of a book, a blood libel for which he apologized after the damage was done.

Perhaps while you are making your first visit to Israel you can meet Yityish Titi Aynaw, an Ethiopian Jew who is the current Miss Israel. She was one of more than 120,000 Ethiopians rescued by Israel in what has been described as the first time in history Africans were taken from the continent to new lives of freedom and safety, not slavery and death.

Perhaps you can meet Salim Joubran, an Arab justice on Israel's Supreme Court. Yes, an Arab, and he's not the first one. BDS uses "apartheid" to inflame passions against Israel by likening it to apartheid South Africa. Did South Africa have a black on its Supreme Court? Of course not.

You have a huge college following. Visit Israeli universities and see they are open to any Israeli citizen, irrespective of religion. BDS claims "segregation" because "Palestinians" cannot attend, but Palestinian Arabs living outside the borders of Israel are not citizens of Israel. Albanians can't attend either. They are not citizens.

Given your interest in children, visit the world-class Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, which treats Arabs alongside Jews and Christians. The staff is composed of Jews, Christians and Muslims. The apartheid lie is just sickening.

Maybe you will visit the Knesset, Israel's parliament and meet with Arab members who routinely criticize Israel in the harshest language. Any of them in jail or being tortured? No, of course not.

Israel protects freedom of speech and freedom of worship. Israel has many mosques and churches. Do you find synagogues or churches in the Arab world?

What do you find? Honor killings, female genital mutilation, suicide belts and toddlers being trained for martyrdom.

BDS ignores that Israel floats in a sea of homicidal neighbors who hate Israel, hate Jews and, yes, hate Christians and the West. By holding Israel, the only majority Jewish state, to a standard it imposes on no other nation, BDS invites suspicion it is animated by anti-Semitism.

Arab citizens of Israel have more freedom, higher income, better health and education than Arabs in any surrounding state. But BDS is not about that.

It's about lies and hate.

Alicia, thanks for not buying into it.

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky

Blog: ph.ly/Byko

Columns: ph.ly/StuBykofsky