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14 Jewish groups are calling on Bertelssman Music Group to reconsider its relationship with the star
BY Richard Percival / July 21, 2023
A music rights label is under pressure to ditch Roger Waters after a series of controversial concerts.
The Pink Floyd co-founder faced allegations that his recent performance to thousands of people in Berlin, Germany was antisemitic after a donned a Nazi-style SS uniform.
Waters, a well-known pro-Palestinian activist, also performed at several cities in the UK amid anger from Jewish community groups.
Now in an open letter, some of the world’s biggest Jewish organisations and the Creative Community for Peace urged BMG, who manages many of Waters’ song rights, to end its relationship with the 79-year-old.
In the letter, the signatories wrote: “We believe that artists, given their massive influence in the world today, have a unique and important responsibility to speak out against bigotry.
“Waters has repeatedly shown that he’s determined to do the opposite – and would instead use his voice, his platform, and his public microphone to fan the flames of hatred.”
The letter is signed by the Community Security Trust, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, B’nai B’rith International, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Canada, the Conference of European Rabbis and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Among the other signatories include the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF), European Jewish Congress, Simon Wiesenthal Center, South African Jewish Board of Deputies, World Jewish Congress and the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany).
Ari Ingel, director of Creative Community for Peace, said: “Roger Waters has peddled and promoted antisemitism and leveraged his immense platform to spread his hateful views to millions worldwide.
“As we witness the continued rise of antisemitism, his words and actions are unacceptable. Our letter demonstrates the Jewish community’s concern that corporations cannot sit idly by while their business partners promote hate.
“We hope BMG reflects on their historical role with antisemitism and re-examines their relationship with Waters.”
It comes after the US State Department weighed in on the controversy by saying that the concert “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimised the Holocaust.”
The State Department added in written response to questions: “The artist in question has a long track record of using anti-Semitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
German police are also investigating whether the Pink Floyd star incited hatred through the May concert. Germany has strict laws on portrayal of the Holocaust, but Waters noted his demagogic role on stage wasn’t new.
During the show, he dressed in a long black coat with a red armband and brandishing an imitation machine gun.
At the same Berlin show, he also appeared to draw parallels between the deaths of several people by flashing their names on a large screen, including those of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp, and Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist shot dead last year while covering an Israeli raid.
Waters has claimed the elements of his performance being called into question are “quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice and bigotry in all its forms”.
In a statement following the controversy surrounding his Berlin show, he said: “The depiction of an unhinged fascist demagogue has been a feature of my shows since Pink Floyd’s The Wall in 1980.
“I have spent my entire life speaking out against authoritarianism and oppression wherever I see it.”
Waters has long criticised Israel, urging a cultural boycott and flying an inflatable pig emblazoned with the Star of David at other shows.
In a statement, Bertelsmann told the JC: “Bertelsmann distances itself from any and all forms of antisemitism and discrimination. Our corporate values are clear: Bertelsmann promotes artistic and intellectual freedom, the protection of democracies and human rights, and respect for traditions and cultural values; this is why our content reflects a diversity of attitudes and opinions.
“Bertelsmann’s music subsidiary BMG manages various song rights for Roger Waters, mainly his rights to the repertoire of the band Pink Floyd, as well as other rights to Roger Waters’ solo repertoire.
“The songs in question do not contain any antisemitic lyrics or allusions. However, BMG is not Roger Waters’ record label and does not release or market albums by him, nor is BMG responsible for tours and performances by the artist. Roger Waters and Pink Floyd partner with other companies for these albums, the marketing, and performances.
“There are no plans to expand the scope of the contractual relationship between BMG and Roger Waters.”
15 Organizations send letter to the Chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann highlighting Waters’ history of antisemitism and bigotry.
LOS ANGELES (July 19, 2023) — Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) released a letter calling on Bertelssman Music Group (BMG) to reconsider its business relationship with Roger Waters. The non-profit entertainment industry organization was joined by 14 of the world’s leading Jewish organizations.
CCFP is a non-profit entertainment industry organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment community who’ve come together to promote the arts as a means to peace and to educate about rising antisemitism.
The letter comes in response to Roger Waters’ recent concerts in Germany where he performed in a Nazi-like uniform and compared a Palestinian-American journalist to Anne Frank.
“We believe that artists, given their massive influence in the world today, have a unique and important responsibility to speak out against bigotry. Mr. Waters has repeatedly shown that he’s determined to do the opposite – and would instead use his voice, his platform, and his public microphone to fan the flames of hatred,” the letter reads.
The following organizations signed onto the letter:
- Creative Community For Peace
- American Jewish Committee
- Anti-Defamation League
- Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council
- B’nai B’rith International
- Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada
- Community Security Trust
- Conference of European Rabbis
- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
- Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France
- European Jewish Congress
- Simon Wiesenthal Center
- South African Jewish Board of Deputies
- World Jewish Congress
- Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany)
The letter also highlights the growing consensus about Waters’ dangerous behavior among governmental institutions, noting: “the US State Department also stated that Waters’ recent concert “contained imagery deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.” The State Department added that, “The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
“For over a decade, Roger Waters has peddled and promoted antisemitism and leveraged his immense platform to spread his hateful views to millions worldwide. As we witness the continued rise of antisemitism, his words and actions are unacceptable. Our letter demonstrates the Jewish community’s concern that corporations cannot sit idly by while their business partners promote hate. We hope BMG reflects on their historical role with antisemitism and reexamines their relationship with Mr. Waters,” stated Ari Ingel, Director of Creative Community for Peace.
Creative Community for Peace aims to promote the arts and culture as a means to peace and to counter and educate the entertainment industry about rising antisemitism. To learn more about their work, visit www.creativecommunityforpeace.com.
OPEN LETTER
Dear Mr. Rabe,
As you may have seen, BMG’s client Roger Waters recently caused an uproar in Germany when he donned a Nazi-like uniform and compared Shireen Abu Akleh — a Palestinian-American journalist who tragically lost her life while working in a war zone — to Anne Frank, a young girl whom Nazis murdered for simply for being a Jew.
In response to this most recent incident, the EU Commission Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life and the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, both loudly condemned Mr. Waters.
The US State Department also stated that Waters’ recent concert “contained imagery deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.” The State Department added that, “The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
Unfortunately, the State Department is 100% correct, as this is just the latest in a long list of troubling antisemitic incidents by Mr. Waters.
In the past, he’s described UK Labour leader Keir Starmer as being controlled by Jewish organizations, he’s flown pig-shaped balloons emblazoned with the Star of David at his concerts, he’s falsely blamed Israel for the death of George Floyd, and he’s openly called for the destruction of the State of Israel.
All of this has happened at a time when antisemitic incidents are rising at alarming rates around the world.
We believe that artists, given their massive influence in the world today, have a unique and important responsibility to speak out against bigotry. Mr. Waters has repeatedly shown that he’s determined to do the opposite – and would instead use his voice, his platform, and his public microphone to fan the flames of hatred.
Given Bertelsmann’s unique history – specifically its actions during WWII– we find it troubling that the company would continue to profit from this relationship, especially when you just recently demonstrated that antisemitism should have no home on your roster.
We respectfully urge you to reconsider BMG’s professional ties with Roger Waters and look forward to your reply.
# # #
Cover photo: Stock Photo ID: 2285154609 4 April 2023. Ziggo Dome Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Concert of Roger Waters
According to the bill, to be announced by Michael Gove, the Minister for Local Government, ‘substantial’ fines will be imposed on offenders
The British government plans to introduce legislation on Monday to ban local authorities and public bodies from boycotting Israeli products, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
According to the bill, to be announced by Michael Gove, the Minister for Local Government, “substantial” fines will be imposed on offenders.
Gove explained to the newspaper that the aim of the proposed legislation was to combat the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, arguing that such initiatives are often accompanied by anti-Semitic rhetoric.
“It is simply unacceptable that public bodies have used taxpayers’ time and money to pursue their own foreign policy agenda,” he said. “The UK needs to adopt a coherent approach to foreign policy, defined by the British government.”
“This is not only damaging to UK foreign policy, it also leads to appalling anti-Semitic rhetoric and abuse. We have therefore taken this decisive step to end these disruptive policies once and for all,” he added.
The commitment to promote such a law was first mentioned in the election manifesto of the current ruling Conservative Party during the 2019 campaign. It was also mentioned in Queen Elizabeth II’s annual address last year, a few months before her death at the age of 96.
In the documents accompanying the Queen’s speech, Lancaster City Council’s decision to support Israel-related boycotts in 2021 was cited as an example, as was Leicester City Council’s similar decision in 2014.
According to British media reports, other councils, such as Swansea and Gwynedd, have also launched boycotts against Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
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Cover photo: Shutterstock, Photo Contributor: JackStuart Stock Photo ID: 1980267017
The modus operandi of the BDS movement can best be described as reductive, adaptable and discursive, or by the acronym RAD.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is the latest weapon in the ongoing war against Israel that has been waged since the state’s founding in 1948.
However, the boycott call of Israel is nothing new. It was initially launched before the State of Israel came into existence when the Arab League called for a total boycott of Palestinian goods. Back then, “Palestinian goods” were Jewish goods.
The boycott has continued since then. For instance, in 1967, after the Arab countries again failed to destroy Israel in a war of annihilation, the Arab League called for a boycott of Coca-Cola since it sold its products in Israel, banning the sale in all Arab countries. Clearly, the boycott movement hurts Arabs more than Israelis, as the Arab world suffered through decades of RC Cola and Pepsi while Israelis enjoyed the real thing.
It’s important to understand that the boycott isn’t about the West Bank and Gaza, as its pre-dates the 1967 war. It’s about all Palestinian territories, and for them, this includes all the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Like the so-called “refugee problem,” the boycott is a political weapon utilized by the anti-Israel movement seeking to overturn the results of the 1948 War of Independence and dismantle and destroy the State of Israel.
The latest manifestation of this concerted campaign came in 2001, at the infamous United Nations hosted “World Conference on Racism” in Durban, South Africa, in September of that year. It was supposed to be an anti-racist forum, but it devolved into what observers deemed a forum of hate.
Keep in mind this was on the heels of President Bill Clinton-sponsored Camp David and Taba negotiations, where Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted the Clinton parameters for a two-state solution, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned down the deal and launched the Second Intifada. President Clinton told Arafat then, “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe,” and later remarked, “I still didn’t believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake.”
To prepare for the Durban Conference, leftist anti-Israel NGOs from Europe and elsewhere got together in Iran earlier in the year to plan their assault. Then in South Africa, outside the conference halls, thousands marched in anti-Israel demonstrations, holding signs that read “Hitler Should Have Finished the Job.” At the same time, booths sold copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and the Arab Lawyers Union distributed caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and fangs dripping with blood, clutching money. Jewish human rights activists were physically threatened, with mobs screaming: “You don’t belong to the human race!”
Inside the NGO forum of the conference, the participants, which included groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, released a formal declaration that called for a complete boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel, deeming the country to be a “racist apartheid state,” guilty of “genocide.” The declaration also called for the reinstitution of UN resolution 3379, deeming Zionism to be racism.
Needing a local Palestinian face for the movement, these anti-Israel NGOs found what they were looking for in Palestinian academic and activist Omar Barghouti, who has become the movement’s figurehead. In 2005, the BDS movement was officially launched under the guise of the Boycott National Committee (BNC), a conglomerate of “civil society” organizations that includes American and EU-designated terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation Palestinian (PFLP), along with several of their front groups.
The boycott movement has now reinvented itself to use the language of critical social justice theory, which is so salient in Western discourse today. To people in the West, BDS presents itself as a social justice movement, an LGBTQ+ rights movement, an environmental movement, and a women’s rights movement. They co-opt any progressive cause, whether blaming Israel for George Floyd’s death or climate change. BDS claims that to stand in “solidarity” with progressive causes is to support the Palestinian cause. Never mind that BDS cleverly obscures their true motives—that their real aim is Israel’s demonization and eventual elimination.
To further these aims, the modus operandi of the BDS movement can best be described as reductive, adaptable and discursive, or by the acronym RAD. It is critical for organizations countering the BDS movement to understand how they operate in order to push back against them effectively.
Taking each element of this in turn, by being reductive the BDS movement wants to change how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is discussed. It’s not a conflict; it’s genocide. Don’t dare talk about peace; it’s apartheid. It’s not a complicated situation; it’s settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing.
BDS is trying to establish the narrative and control the rules of discourse. They try to shut down speech and silence people in a move right out of the woke leftist playbook.
BDS is trying to establish the narrative and control the rules of discourse. They try to shut down speech and silence people in a move right out of the woke leftist playbook. They are not interested in discussing history, nuance, or facts, but rather reducing the conflict to a few simple buzzwords that are meant to demonize Israel. The partition plan of 1947 and the Gaza coup in 2007 require discussion, but genocide and apartheid are easily understood. They are evil, just like Israel.
For instance, vocal anti-Israel BDS activist Mohammed el-Kurd recently stated on a webinar that he is not interested in discussing what the term apartheid really means or if Israel’s conduct meets the definition, he just wants Israel labeled with the “negative connotation it carries in the psyche of the public.”
The BDS messaging is also adaptable. The anti-Israel movement effectively weaponizes this language by co-opting the ills of any country and forcing people to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through that lens. In South Africa, Israel is an apartheid state; in America, Israel is a racist state and just another example of white people repressing people of color; and in Australia, where Aboriginal rights are so salient, Jews in Israel are simply the colonizers of the indigenous Arab population. In Europe, members of the BDS movement understand that antisemitic beliefs are still deeply held by many Europeans, even if below the surface. Just as the term “antisemitism” was coined to sanitize anti-Jewish bigotry in the late 1800s, “anti-Zionism” has now become an acceptable form to express this hatred. BDS pushing an anti-Zionist narrative in Europe finds a receptive audience there.
BDS is fungible. Whatever the worst thing a country has done in its history, whatever a country’s most loathsome qualities, Israel is doing it now.
For instance, labeling Israel as a settler colonial state is central to this new paradigm. The Jewish state is a foreign body, a cancer inserted into the Arab Middle East that must be excised. Unfortunately, the boycott movement and its supporters genuinely believe this to their core and preach it in their teachings. They have convinced themselves that Jews are not really from the Land of Israel, and, like the Afrikaans of South Africa, they will eventually give up the country and hand it over to the Palestinians. Even more troubling for those who genuinely want peace and a resolution to the conflict, these people think that victory is close at hand. Israel will fall if they can just hold on for a few more weeks or months. This is the Middle East’s big lie: a willful misunderstanding of who Jewish Israelis are and rejection of the Jewish peoples inalienable ties and attachment to the Land of Israel. According to a recent Palestinian poll, two-thirds say Israel will not celebrate the centenary of its establishment, and the majority believes that the Palestinian people will soon recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes. Why make peace, why engage in dialogue, when Israel will be eradicated soon?
Finally, BDS is a discursive process that does not require its adherents and supporters to rely on facts but just to continuously make accusations. So anti-Israel activists simply ramble from one charge to the next. “The policing in America is Israel’s fault, George Floyd’s death was Israel’s fault, Jews have no connection to the land of Palestine, Jesus was a Palestinian not a Jew, Middle Eastern Jews are merely a religious group and just Jewish Arabs, Jews from Europe are fake Jews and are really Khazars, Zionists caused the Holocaust to establish Israel, Israel is an apartheid state, Israel is a Nazi state, hundreds of Israeli laws are racist, Israel is responsible for Jeremy Corbyn’s ouster from the UK Labour party, the refugee issue is Israel’s fault, Oslo collapsed due to Israel, Israel keeps rejecting peace, before the Zionists came along, Arabs and Jews lived peacefully together as equals, etc.”
The goal is to keep Israel constantly on trial and in a position to defend itself, whether there is any validity to the claims made or not.
As British General Sir Ian Hamilton stated: “Propaganda is inverted patriotism, draws nourishment from the sins of the enemy. If there are no sins, invent them! The aim is to make the enemy appear so great a monster that he forfeits the rights of a human being.”
The BDS movement understands this intimately. While it claims to advocate for Palestinian rights, its far more concerned with the delegitimization and undermining of the very existence of the State of Israel. BDS proponents often employ manipulative rhetoric and misleading narratives to sway public opinion, painting a distorted picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its deeply deceptive tactics hinder meaningful dialogue and compromise and perpetuate a cycle of hostility and division, ultimately impeding the prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. BDS is anything but rad.
Ari Ingel is an attorney and the Director of Creative Community For Peace. You can follow him on Twitter at @OGAride.
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Cover photo: Shutterstock, Photo Contributor: Micah Casella Stock Photo ID: 1972117661
