CO-FOUNDER OF PINK FLOYD CALLS ON MUSICIANS TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL
London, 11 Dul Qo’dah 1434/17 September 2013 (MINA) – The co-founder of Pink Floyd, George Roger Waters asked musicians to boycott Israel, in an open letter to his Facebook page and the Palestinian activists website Electronic Intifada.
“I write to you now, my brothers and sisters in the family of Rock and Roll, to ask you to join with me, and thousands of other artists around the world, to declare a cultural boycott on Israel,” he wrote on Monday.
“Please join me and all our brothers and sisters in global civil society in proclaiming our rejection of Apartheid in Israel and occupied Palestine, by pledging not to perform or exhibit in Israel or accept any award or funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights,” he wrote in his letter.
Waters has been a frequent advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement regarding Israel, encouraging institutions to withdraw investments there, among other tactics. Alray media reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).
George Roger Waters was born 6 September 1943. He is an English musician, singer, songwriter and composer. In 1965, he co-founded the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band’s lyricist, principal songwriter and conceptual leader.
Political views
Waters has been outspoken about Middle Eastern politics, and in June 2009 he openly opposed the Israeli West Bank barrier, calling it an “obscenity [that] should be torn down”. Later that year, he pledged his support to the Gaza Freedom March, and in 2011 he announced that he had joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Waters spoke about his support for BDS, stating that he has “been very disillusioned with UK foreign policy … since Wilson. It was such a political turnabout from Keir Hardie and Attlee and the principles of British socialism.
In October 2010, after using images of the Star of David during performances of The Wall, Waters drew criticisms that led him to write an open letter to The Independent in which he commented: “If I don’t respond, people will see the story and will come to believe I’m anti-Semitic, and I’m not. Nothing could be further from the truth.
He explained that the artwork used during his shows is “representative of religious and national and commercial interests, all of which have a malign influence on our lives and prevent us from treating each other decently”. He added: “You can attack Israeli policy without being anti-Jewish … It’s like saying if you criticise the US policy you are being anti-Christian”.
“I’m critical of the Israeli policy of occupying Palestinian land and their policy of building settlements, which is entirely illegal under international law, and also of ghettoising the people whose land they are building on … It’s that foreign policy I’m against. It’s nothing to do with the religion.
In March 2013, during an interview with Electronic Intifada, Waters stated that the American media “was under instructions from somewhere not to report [criticism of Israel] to the American public, on what grounds I cannot guess.”
On 20 July 2013, during a concert in Belgium, Waters’ road crew released a pig-shaped balloon that had been painted with a Star of David along with several other political symbols, including fascist, communist and capitalist representations.
As the balloon floated over the audience, Waters sang the lyrics to “In the Flesh”: “get him up against the wall, that one looks Jewish and that one’s a coon, who let all of this riff-raff into the room” while holding a machine gun replica and wearing a long black leather jacket with a red-and-white arm band reminiscent of a Nazi uniform.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized him by stating “Waters deployed a classic disgusting medieval anti-Semitic caricature widely used by both Nazi and Soviet propaganda to incite hatred against Jews. (T/P04/E1 )
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
