Singer Roger Waters, who has been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism, claimed in an interview printed Wednesday to be the sufferer of a resort boycott in Uruguay and Argentina led by “the Israeli lobby.”
The former Pink Floyd cofounder and frontman, simply off a number of concert events in Brazil as a part of his “This Is Not a Drill” tour, is scheduled to carry out in Montevideo on Friday, adopted by Buenos Aires subsequent Tuesday and Wednesday.
But the British-born performer instructed Argentina’s Pagina 12 newspaper he has no selection however to remain in lodgings in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
“Somehow these idiots of the Israeli lobby managed to co-opt all the hotels in Buenos Aires and Montevideo and organized this extraordinary boycott based on the malicious lies… about me,” Pagina 12 quoted him as saying in an article printed in Spanish.
Approached by AFP, inns in Montevideo declined to remark.
The presidents of Uruguay’s central Israelite Committee, Roby Schindler, and of the Jewish NGO B’Nai B’Rith, Franklin Rosenfeld, accused Rogers this week of being a “propagator” of Jewish hatred, in letters addressed to the Sofitel resort within the Uruguayan capital and disseminated on social media.
Schindler known as Waters a “misogynist, xenophobe and anti-Semitic” whereas Rosenfeld threatened an anti-Sofitel marketing campaign if the resort hosted the “anti-Semitic artist.”
Waters instructed Pagina 12 that “I have not had a single anti-Semitic thought in my entire life” insisting his criticism was of the Israeli authorities’s actions.
Waters, one of many highest-grossing touring artists of all time, has lengthy criticized Israel, urging a cultural boycott and flying an inflatable pig emblazoned with the Star of David at his concert events.
The rocker, born in Britain and a longtime New York resident, lately additionally appeared to forged doubt in an interview on the veracity of Israel’s statements in regards to the October 7 assault by Islamist group Hamas.
That assault, the worst in Israel’s historical past, killed about 1,200 individuals, largely civilians, with Hamas taking about 240 hostages again into Gaza, in response to Israeli officers.
In Gaza, greater than 11,300 individuals, additionally largely civilians, have been killed in an intense Israeli bombing marketing campaign and floor invasion in response, well being officers within the Hamas-run territory have mentioned.
The United States and European Union have criticized Waters’ anti-Israel statements.
Waters, 80, additionally has performances scheduled in Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador within the coming weeks.
© 2023 AFP