Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, has appealed to his colleagues in Rock and Roll to
“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.”
The co-founder of my favorite rock band, made the
appeal in a letter published on August 18 on his Waters’ Facebook
page.
Among Pink Floyd’s international successes are such
albums as The Dark side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals,
The Wall and The Final Cut. They have sold more than 250 million albums
worldwide, including 74.5 million units sold in the United States as of 2013.
Waters appeals to his “brothers and sisters in the
family of Rock and Roll, to join with me, and thousands of other artists around
the world, to declare a cultural boycott on Israel, to shed light on these
problems and also to support all our brothers and sisters in Palestine and
Israel who are struggling to end all forms of Israeli oppression and who wish
to live in peace, justice, equality and freedom.”
The letter reads:
A note from Roger Waters -- August 18, 2013, Warsaw
To My Colleagues in Rock and Roll
Nigel Kennedy, the virtuoso British violinist and
violist, at The Recent Promenade Concerts at The Albert Hall in London,
mentioned that Israel is apartheid. Nothing unusual there you might think. Then
one Baroness Deech, (Nee Fraenkel) disputed the fact that Israel is an
apartheid state and prevailed upon the BBC to censor Kennedy’s performance by
removing his statement. Baroness Deech produced not one shred of evidence to
support her claim and yet the BBC -- non-political, supposedly -- acting solely
on Baroness Deech’s say so, suddenly went all 1984 on us.
Well!! Time to stick my head above the parapet again
-- alongside my brother Nigel Kennedy -- where it belongs. And by the
way, Nigel, great respect man. So here follows a letter last re-drafted in July,
2013
To My Colleagues in Rock and Roll:
In the wake of the tragic shooting to death of unarmed
teenager Travon Martin and the acquittal of his killer Zimmerman, yesterday,
Stevie Wonder spoke at a gig declaring that he will not perform in the State of
Florida until that state repeals its “Stand Your Ground” Law. In effect he has
declared a boycott on grounds of conscience. I applaud his position and stand
with him.
It has brought back to me a statement I made in a
letter I wrote last February 14, to which I have referred but have never
published.
The time has come, so here it is.
This letter has been simmering on the back burner of
my conscience and consciousness for some time.
It is seven years since I joined BDS (Boycott
Divestment and Sanctions), a nonviolent movement to oppose Israel’s occupation
of the West Bank and violations of international law and Palestinian human
rights. The aim of BDS is to bring international attention to these Israeli
policies, and hopefully, to help bring them to an end. All the people of the
region deserve better than this.
To cut to the chase, Israel has been found guilty,
independently, by international human rights organizations, UN officials, and
the International Court of Justice, of serious breaches of international law.
These include, and I will name only two:
The Crime of Apartheid:
The systematic oppression of one ethnic group by
another. On 9 March 2012, for instance, the UN Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination called
on Israel to end its racist policies and laws that contravene the prohibition against racial segregation and apartheid.
The Crime of Ethnic Cleansing:
The forcible removable of indigenous peoples from
their rightful land in order to settle an occupying population. For example, in
East Jerusalem non-Jewish families are routinely physically evicted from their
homes to make way for Jewish occupants.
There are others.
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| Waters performing "Comfortably Numb" in Kansas Ciy in 2010 (GabeMc) |
Given the inability or unwillingness of our
governments, or the United Nations Security Council to put pressure on Israel
to cease these violations and make reparations to the victims, it falls to
civil society and conscientious citizens of the world to dust off our consciences,
shoulder our responsibilities and act.
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, to shed
light on these problems and also to support all our brothers and sisters in
Palestine and Israel who are struggling to end all forms of Israeli oppression
and who wish to live in peace, justice, equality and freedom.
I am writing to you all now because of two recent
events:
1. Stevie Wonder.
Word came to me, the first week of last December that
Stevie Wonder had been booked to headline at a gala dinner for the Friends of
The Israeli Defense Force in LA on 6 December 2012. An event to raise money for
the Israeli armed forces, as if the $4.3,000,000,000 that we, the US tax payers,
give them each year were not enough? This came right after The Israeli Defense
Force had concluded yet another war on Gaza -- Operation Pillar of Defense --
according to Human Rights Watch, committing war crimes against the besieged 1.6
million Palestinians there.
Anyway, I wrote to Stevie to try to persuade him to
cancel. My letter ran along these lines, “Would you have felt OK
performing at the Policeman’s Ball in Johannesburg the night after the
Sharpeville massacre in 1960 or in Birmingham, Alabama, to raise money for the
Law Enforcement officers who clubbed, tear-gassed and water-cannoned those
children trying to integrate in 1963?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu also wrote an impassioned plea
to Stevie and 3,000 others appended their names to a change.org petition.
Stevie, to his great credit, cancelled!
2. Earlier that week I delivered a speech at The
United Nations. If you are interested you can find this speech on YouTube.
The interesting thing about these two stories is that
there was NOT ONE mention of either story in the mainstream media in the United
States.
The clear inference would be that the media in the USA
is not interested in the predicament of the Palestinian people, or for that
matter the predicament of the Israeli people. We can only hope they may become
interested as they eventually did in the politics of apartheid South Africa.
Back in the days of Apartheid South Africa, at first
it was a trickle of artists that refused to play there, a trickle that
exercised a cultural boycott, then it became a stream, then a river, then a
torrent and then a flood. (Remember Steve van Zant, Bruce and all the others?
“We will not Play in Sun City?”) Why? Because, like the UN and the
International Court of Justice they understood that Apartheid is wrong.
The sports community joined the battle -- no one would
go and play cricket or rugby in South Africa -- and eventually the political
community joined in as well. We all -- as a global, musical, sporting and
political community -- raised our voices as one and the apartheid regime in
South Africa fell.
Maybe we are at the tipping point now with Israel and
Palestine. These are good people both and they deserve a just solution to their
predicament. Each and every one of them deserves freedom, justice and equal
rights. Just recently, the ANC, the ruling party of South Africa, has endorsed
BDS. We are nearly there.
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.
Roger Waters
