Pink Floyd’s former lead singer and bassist Roger Waters on Sunday declared his
support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel, in a
statement published on the website of the Alternative Information Center, a
Palestinian- Israeli NGO.
“Where governments refuse to act, people must,
with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal,” Waters, 67, wrote. “For
some that meant joining the Gaza Freedom March, for others it meant joining the
humanitarian flotilla that tried to bring much needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.
For me it means declaring my intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the
people of Palestine, but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree
with their governments racist and colonial policies, by joining a campaign of
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.”
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CommitteeIsraeli fears of BDS are exaggerated – for the
momentWaters said his
position was not anti-Semitic and was not on attack on Israelis, but rather a
“plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other
disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.”
The Pink Floyd frontman’s
decision to support a boycott goes back to a 2006 visit to Jerusalem and
Bethlehem during which he saw the West Bank security barrier.
“Nothing
could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The Wall is an appalling edifice
to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual
observer from another world, with disdainful aggression. If it could be like
that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the
Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my
conscience would not allow me to walk away from that Wall, from the fate of the
Palestinians I met, people whose lives are crushed daily in a multitude of ways
by Israel’s occupation,” Waters wrote in the Alternative Information Center
statement.
During his visit four-anda- half years ago, Waters moved a
concert scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv to Neveh Shalom, a town where Jews and
Arabs live side by side.
“Against all expectations, it was to become the
biggest music event in the short history of Israel. Sixty-thousand fans battled
traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for me and my band, and at
the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to
demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbors
and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel,” he
wrote.
After years of what Waters says was failure by the government to
“grant civil rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews,”
and the extension of the security barrier “illegally annexing more and more of
the West Bank,” the musician decided to support “Palestinians in their civil,
nonviolent resistance.”
Last month, American folk music legend Pete
Seeger, 91, also joined the boycott campaign, saying that he regretted
previously giving his support to a Jewish National Fund-sponsored
event.
According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions,
Seeger “read historical and current material and spoke to neighbors, friends and
three rabbis before making his decision to support the boycott movement against
Israel.”
Other musicians such as Elvis Costello and The Pixies have
canceled concerts in Israel as well, citing political reasons.