WaPo Ad Rips Lorde For Concert Cancellation

A full-page advertisement appeared in Sunday's Washington Post calling Lorde a bigot, a week after the New Zealand-born singer cancelled a concert in Israel.

The ad, in the 31 December edition of the newspaper, was placed by outspoken rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s This World: The Values Network and criticises the 21-year-old for joining “a global antisemitic boycott of Israel” while still performing in Russia.

Shmuley Boteach

According to The Guardian, it features a large photo of the singer superimposed over a picture of men running through rubble cradling babies, with the headline: “Lorde and New Zealand ignore Syria to attack Israel.”

Last month the Grammy award winner cancelled a concert scheduled in Tel Aviv for June after criticism from activists in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

The decision also came after an open letter written by two New Zealanders argued the concert would show support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“I have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show,” Lorde wrote at the time. “I’m not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one.”

The ad says Lorde’s decision showed how a “growing prejudice against the Jewish state” in New Zealand was “trickling down to its youth”.

It cites New Zealand’s choice in December to vote, along with 127 countries, in favour of a UN resolution calling for the US to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Regarded by his critics as a rightwing self-publicist who styles himself as “America’s rabbi”, Boteach , who has hosted radio shows, was widely criticised in 2015 for a similar full-page advert in the New York Times accusing Barack Obama’s then national security adviser Susan Rice of turning a blind eye to the Rwandan genocide when she was on President Bill Clinton’s national security team in the 1990s.