A LETTER TO SNOOP DOGG…

Dear Snoop Dogg,

As a life long fan of hip hop I am extremely dis­ap­poin­ted in your recent decision to become brand ambas­sad­or for Seedo, an Israeli start-up pro­du­cing home grown Marijuana devices. We all know you pride your­self as an advoc­ate for Marijuana use and I can see why you would grasp this oppor­tun­ity to sup­port an innov­at­ive argritech com­pany. How­ever, I can only assume you are unaware of the implic­a­tions your sup­port of such a com­pany based in Israel will entail. I am aware spokespeople from the organ­isa­tion Boy­cott, Divest and Sanc­tions (BDS) have reached out to you in the past appeal­ing for you to boy­cott per­form­ing in Israel, which you did for whatever reas­ons. There­fore, I know you are not com­pletely ignor­ant to the bru­tal truth of what is going on.

By sup­port­ing Israeli start-up com­pan­ies and their eco­nomy you are becom­ing com­pli­cit in the occu­pa­tion of Palestine. This means the segreg­a­tion, restric­tion of move­ment, mass unem­ploy­ment and incar­cer­a­tion of Palestini­ans without evid­ence and vari­ous human rights abuses. The rap­id devel­op­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Israel, sim­il­ar to that used by Seedo is being exploited to increase the sur­veil­lance and con­trol of Palestini­ans under occupation.

To quote you:

“Pro­mot­ing a health­i­er life­style by provid­ing my friends and com­munit­ies with products that allow for growth in unused urb­an spaces is some­thing I’m all the way down with. Seedo cre­ates cost sav­ings and the oppor­tun­ity for all people to bene­fit from agri­cul­tur­al technologies.”

Palestini­ans are not bene­fit­ing from these tech­no­lo­gies. I’ve spent weeks with Palestini­an farm­ers on fields which they leg­ally own, try­ing to pro­tect them from intim­id­a­tion and arrests by the Israeli mil­it­ary. To save them from hav­ing their live­li­hoods and their homes taken from them by the State of Israel. There are over 700,000 Palestini­ans refugees in Palestine as a res­ult of Israeli colonization.

I am still haunted by my vis­its to the West Bank. The occu­pa­tion in Palestine calls for solid­ar­ity in mass move­ments for equal­ity and justice just as the Black Civil Rights move­ments of the 1950’s and the end of Apartheid in South Africa did. Angela Dav­is calls for inter­sec­tion­al­ity between human rights abuses across the world for all eth­nic minor­it­ies and Hip Hop has always been a voice of the oppressed.

Please keep in mind the thou­sands of Palestini­an chil­dren who will suf­fer at the cost of the blood money you will be sup­port­ing. Along­side becom­ing brand ambas­sad­or for Seedo, you have now also become the face of oppres­sion, exploit­a­tion and a human­it­ari­an crisis which is being inflic­ted on the many Palestini­ans who may have once listened to your music as a form of hope to escape their dire realities.

Please vis­it the West Bank for your­self and you will see that the blood money of the product you are sup­port­ing is not worth more than the human lives it will cost. Boy­cot­ting Israeli goods is the only choice of free­dom the Palestini­ans have, much like that of the mod­el inspired by Nel­son Man­dela him­self in South Africa to end apartheid.

Quite lit­er­ally, ‘Murder was the case’ that they gave you.

Khadija Jones.