Roger Waters wrote an open letter to Lana Del Rey about her upcoming performance in Israel, and his main reason for her to cancel is based on a combination of half-truths and a major lie.
Dear Lana Del Rey
I have been reading your comments on Twitter, maybe I can help clear a couple of things up. Palestine is a unique situation in that the BDS picket line exists at the request of Palestine civil society as a whole. To respect it as I, and many others do, is a political act of support for the Palestinian people in their struggle for basic human rights. To cross it, conversely, is a political act in support of the apartheid state that would deny them those basic human rights. Even if in your heart of hearts you believe yourself to be neutral. As Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu rightly says, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” I implore you, and any other act considering crossing the picket line, to perform at the Meteor Festival to consider long and hard, I have no doubt the Israeli promoters are paying top dollar, they are well known for that, but is the price worth passing up your moment on the road to Damascus and abandoning your Palestinian brothers and sisters to their fate in their hour of need ?
His argument comes down to the idea that performing in Israel is akin to crossing a picket line that ordinary Palestinians support.
This is a lie.
Waters writes that "the BDS picket line exists at the request of Palestine civil society as a whole." But when BDS advocates say "Palestinian civil society" they are not referring to ordinary Palestinians. They are referring to a bunch of NGOs and labor unions that signed the original BDS letter.
Some of these NGOs seem to have only one person. Some are based outside of the territories. For example, the contact page for the Canadian Palestine Foundation of Quebec, one of the supposed "Palestinian civil society" signatories, has only a single cell phone number. Not a single name is listed on the website.
"Palestinian civil society" is an artificial construct, made up of unelected, self-proclaimed "leaders" whose hate for Israel often supersedes their support for Palestinians. One apparent example is the Prisoner's Friends Association – Ansar Al-Sajeen, which is an Iranian Shi'a prisoner support organization in Gaza that is related to Hezbollah terrorists.
The lies don't end there. Because the original boycott call didn't come from "Palestinian civil society" but from Western haters of Israel, who came up with the entire idea of boycotting and divesting from Israel in the wake of the infamous Durban conference and who then convinced the Palestinian NGOs to appear to be on board with what is effectively a non-Palestinian movement.
But there is a more fundamental lie.
The biggest lie of all is that ordinary Palestinians want to boycott Israel. They don't. On the contrary - polls show that a significant majority want more jobs in Israel and more investment from Israeli companies in the territories. If Waters cared about Palestinians, he should listen to what real Palestinians want, not what a few cherry picked organizations were told to sign by Waters' Israel-hating Western buddies. Waters would encourage Israeli companies to open more factories to employ Palestinians like SodaStream used to, not less - because this is what Palestinians want!
Waters' concern for Palestinians is paper-thin. All he really cares about is demonizing Israel. His statement that "I have no doubt the Israeli promoters are paying top dollar, they are well known for that" is borderline antisemitic - the only reason any promoter would pay anything is because the fans want to see the artist and are willing to pay for tickets, not because Jews are rich. And he doesn't say a word when stars like Del Rey play in Lebanon, a country whose very laws are discriminatory against Palestinians and where Palestinians are in worse shape than in Gaza.
Just this one paragraph proves, yet again, that Roger Waters is a hypocrite whose hate for the Jewish state is far greater than any concern he has for the lives of Palestinians or anyone else.