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CCFP Staff
In Cultural Boycott

FORGET BDS: KEEP ON ROCKING IN THE FREE WORLD

BY , Jpost.com
APRIL 16, 2017

With a staggering number of international musical acts streaming to Israel, does anyone even remember BDS?

The variations on “Hava Nagila” and “Hatikva” – two “Jewish” songs that foreigners most often associate with Israel – are going to be stretched to their limits over the next few months, as the onslaught of international artists performing at local venues rises to a crescendo.

That quaint obsession has turned into a clichéd but almost obligatory requirement for many visiting bands and artists from the US and Europe, and is a source of pride for concert-goers. But the musicians in question often come away from their experience in Israel with considerably less anachronistic, more vibrant impressions.

“Most of the artists that come here leave as goodwill ambassadors for Israel,” says Guy Beser, the CEO of Bluestone Entertainment, one of the country’s leading concert promotion companies.

“They feel the warmth of the audience and of the people. We take them to the North, the Dead Sea and Jerusalem, and they fall in love with the country. And when they stay and perform in Tel Aviv, they immediately understand that the country is nothing like they expected. After experiencing the real reality of Israel, they leave with a different impression. And the artists talk to each other and the managers talk to each other.”

Beser – who together with his partners in Bluestone, including Madonna’s Israel-born manager, Guy Oseary, has previously brought Bon Jovi, Backstreet Boys and Enrique Iglesias to Israel – has an action-packed summer ahead, with shows by Aerosmith (May 17), Britney Spears (July 3) and Guns ‘n’ Roses (July 15). They’ve joined a thriving industry full of veterans like Shuki Weiss who have been importing entertainment to Israel for decades, including some of the world’s top entertainers like Paul McCartney, Elton John, The Rolling Stones and Madonna.

The three-year-old Bluestone Entertainment made international headlines last month when mammoth concert conglomerate Live Nation acquired a majority stake in the company, a move seen by many as a giant vote of confidence in Israel as a reliable and professional destination for the world’s biggest touring artists. It also apparently means that the constant thorn in the side of the Israel concert industry – the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement – is no longer considered to be a serious threat.“BDS is losing, and the power of music is winning,” says Beser. “For the great majority of artists, the political issues are on the back burner – they are coming to play for their fans.”

Bluestone and the other Israeli concert promoters are up front with artists, agents and managers about the likelihood of them being approached, boycotted, criticized and petitioned by BDS supporters after they announce a date in Israel. Together, with efforts by organizations like the Creative Community for Peace, an NGO founded by Los Angeles music executives that supports artists who plan to perform in Israel and face BDS campaigns, the promoters prepare the artists for the onslaught and provide encouragement and reinforcement every step of the way. According to Hillel Wachs, a promoter with 2B Vibes, the company bringing the Pixies, Paul Young and Macklemore to Israel this summer, when a politically aware and influential act like Radiohead agrees to perform here, it creates a ripple effect.

“It sends a message that BDS is not really a factor, and that it’s acceptable to come to Israel even if you don’t agree with every government policy,” he says.

“Most artists realize that the situation is not black and white. The superstars like Britney Spears are not affected by BDS and neither are the acts that appeal to the 60-plus crowd. But there are some current, younger artists who may be politically aware, and it’s a bigger issue for them to come here. But they still come,” he adds, pointing to American indie rock band All Them Witches, which consists of liberal Bernie Sanders supporters, who had no problem with performing last year in Tel Aviv and are returning this year on July 9.

“There’s a general understanding that it’s a complex issue and that music is supposed to supersede political conflict and bridge gaps to bring people together,” Wachs says.

There’s also the understanding that Israel is a viable and lucrative place to perform. The 2017 concert lineup is staggering in its volume and diversity, with old-timers like Rod Stewart and Foreigner, youth-oriented pop and hip hop from Justin Bieber and Tyler the Creator, top-flight critical darlings Nick Cave and Pond, ’90s nostalgia like Dinosaur Jr., Tears for Fears and Pet Shop Boys, the aforementioned superstars and recurring (popular in Israel) oddities like Smokie, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Abba, Dire Straits and ELO tribute bands.

Although it may seem like Israel is a hot destination, Wachs says that it’s really no different from the past few summers since Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), which resulted in numerous cancellations.

“There have been more shows announced earlier this year, but that’s just the nature of the beast, with agencies in New York and London planning the routing of tours much more in advance than they used to,” he says.

“There does seem to be something for everyone, with lots of big-name acts for both young and older audiences. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call Israel a hot concert destination. Over time, however, it’s become quite normative to include Israel in routing a tour when it works out. And because there’s more competition in Europe and because we pay a premium to get artists to come here, it’s financially worth their while.”

THE CHOICE available to Israeli music fans has also made them more selective when deciding what to fork out their money to see, says Wachs. And with prices for the big shows at venues like Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park reaching upward of NIS 400 to NIS 600 for standing and looking at the video screen tickets, promoters are working extra hard to ensure they’re bringing over artists who will fill the seats or grass.

“There’s certainly a thought process going on that didn’t exist before, when the choice of shows wasn’t so vast,” he says. “Now a younger fan has to think, Well, I’ll go to Macklemore but not Justin Bieber, or an older fan might consider if it’s an artist who may not be touring much more and it’s the last chance to see them. Concert-goers are working within a limited entertainment budget.”

One person reaping the rewards of more concert choices, but paying for it, is 54-year-old music fan and Ma’aleh Adumim resident Israel Friedman, who bought tickets to see Radiohead and Nick Cave, and recently attended American indie favorite Grandaddy’s performance last month in Tel Aviv.

“If I had unlimited funds, I would go to see a lot more shows,” says Friedman, who prefers smaller venues and current artists over the legacy acts.

“There’s quite an audience in Israel for new music, and people here are knowledgeable about what’s out there. I like to go to shows like Grandaddy at the Barby Club because they are less expensive, you are close to the band and you get a worthwhile experience for your entertainment shekel.”

Still, Friedman is going to join the tens of thousands flocking to Hayarkon Park to see Radiohead, perhaps the concert of the summer in the pecking order of rock perennials still touring. Ticket sales for it and most of the summer shows are healthy, according to the promoters, and Beser, for one, isn’t concerned about too many shows competing for the consumer’s attention and shekel.

“The Israeli fans have proved in the last three years that there is a real market and demand for live international shows,” he says. “And it’s going to get bigger; Israelis are going to start getting the megashows and the festivals. That’s my dream show to promote – bringing over one of the big festivals that Live Nation owns [such as Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Reading]. We will see more and more shows coming to Israel in the next few years.”

OF COURSE, the wild card in the deck is the unpredictable security situation in the region. But despite flare-ups and saber rattling with Hamas on the volatile southern border with Gaza, chaos emanating from Syria and Lebanon, and the specter of Palestinian terrorism never far away, both Beser and Wachs are optimistic that the summer shows will pass quietly.

“Posturing on the part of our neighbors is not new, and we’re looking forward to a fantastic summer of live music in Israel,” says Wachs.

Just in case, all the promoters take out insurance policies that protect them in the event of cancellations due to unforeseen circumstances.

“We are living in the Middle East, and you can never really plan that far in advance,” says Beser. “We hope this summer will be full of shows and good vibes, and not missile attacks, but we have insurance taken out for that specific reason with every show and artist we host.”

So with BDS barely a factor, the promoters plan, the bands rehearse and the fans buy their tickets in heady anticipation. All of them hope that Hamas and Hezbollah don’t have other plans.

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

Why Eddie Izzard got into trouble for trying to run a marathon

British comedian Eddie Izzard landed in Israel Thursday afternoon to perform in Tel Aviv in the evening and then to run in the Palestine Marathon on Friday…or so he thought.

Responding to the comedian’s tweet, the official Twitter account of the Palestine Marathon made it clear that they would not allow this, writing, “British comedian Eddie Izzard cannot run for freedom this Friday if he entertains in Tel Aviv on Thursday.”

Eddie Izzard was surely attempting to show his support for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, yet the Marathon — following the decree of BDS and their concept of “anti-normalization” — has essentially told him that that’s impossible, that he has to choose between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Normalization,” in short, is defined as any cooperation or interaction with anybody who violates the central premises or guidelines of the BDS movement, and does not aim to realize its three stated goals, which ultimately aim for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

The “anti-normalization” movement, an outgrowth of BDS,” is dedicated to pressuring Palestinians, Arabs, and people in general not to engage in projects with those whom they consider to be guilty of “normalization.”

So, because Eddie Izzard is performing in Israel — a violation of the BDS guidelines — he is considered guilty of “normalization” and hence is a persona non grata amongst Palestinians. Sadly, this is not a unique situation.

Back in 2009, legendary musician Leonard Cohen scheduled concerts in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Unfortunately, his show in Ramallah was cancelled and BDS claimed victory, saying, “Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel‘s colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel.”

More recently, the same thing happened to Ms. Lauryn Hill, who canceled her show in Israel in 2015 after it became clear that she would be unable to perform in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah, since no Palestinian venues — thanks to pressure from BDS — would agree to host her if she performed in Israel as well.

And it isn’t just the Palestinian Territories — but rather the entire Arab world — that BDS tries to make off-limits to artists who perform in Israel.  In 2013, when Alicia Keys performed in Dubai after her concert in Tel Aviv, BDS urged the venue in Dubai to cancel her show and “tell her that she is not welcome in Arab countries,” simply because she performed in Israel. We saw it again when the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon (CBSI) called on the Lebanese people to boycott Chris Brown’s show if he continued with his performance in Israel, which he did.

In all of these cases, artists are told that they they can either support Israelis or Palestinians — but not both — and that if they perform for Israelis, then they have automatically taken a stand against Palestinians and are no longer welcome among them.

Music, art, and comedy should be used to bring us together, never to tear us apart. Those of us who care about peace must do our utmost to tackle this “us or them” mentality being spread by BDS.

We at Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace and to countering the cultural boycott of Israel, are supremely disheartened by this discriminatory tactic, which has long been propagated by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

CCFP Staff
In Article

BRITNEY SPEARS TO PERFORM IN ISRAEL, PROMOTERS SAY BDS INFLUENCE WANING

BY 
MARCH 28, 2017 19:57, Jerusalem Post
Spears’ concert, which was announced in a swanky Tel Aviv hotel, looks like a done deal.

After years of fighting to get US pop sensation Britney Spears to perform in Israel, promoters have finally set the date of July 3 in Tel Aviv. While Spears is no longer the epicenter of pop music, she still commands a large international crowd, a large price tag and likely the condemnation of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists who will seek to prevent the performance.

According to Guy Beser, CEO of Bluestone Entertainment, which is bringing Spears to Israel, his company has been successful in recruiting big-name artists with little impact from the BDS movement. “When it comes to artists as big as Britney, Guns N’ Roses, or Aerosmith, I don’t think that BDS really effects them,” he said.

The BDS movement rose to prominence in the mid-2000s as a loosely connected group of activists and organizations seeking to pressure Israel economically and politically through cultural, economic and academic boycotts.

A statement by the movement this month said it is petitioning the band Radiohead to call of their July concert, because “such a performance, irrespective of intentions, will help Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid cover up its massive violations of Palestinian human rights.”

Avi Yossef, a promoter with Israeli entertainment giant, the Zappa group, said the impact of BDS is waning in his industry. “In the last two years, we see BDS is having a serious breaking up,” remarked Yossef, “and we feel it here in Israel.”

Nevertheless, a number of acts have canceled their Israeli performances due to BDS pressure, including R&B singer Lauryn Hill in 2015 and Elvis Costello in 2010. Others, including Beyonce and Pharrell Williams, faced BDS pressure and canceled, citing scheduling conflicts. BDS activists typically take to social media with Twitter hashtags and petitions garnering thousands of signatures.

Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), an NGO that supports artists who plan to perform in Israel and face BDS campaigns, has worked with artists such as Alicia Keys and Macy Gray who were considering dropping their Israel shows due to BDS pressure.

Cancellations come at a big loss to Israeli promoters. The Lauryn Hill cancellation cost the Zappa Group somewhere between 3 and 4 million shekels. Hill was scheduled to perform before a crowd of nearly 15,000 people, before she canceled two days prior to the performance, Yossef said.

While Israeli promoters say the BDS phenomenon is negligible, the Israeli government has ramped up its crackdown on BDS supporters, citing it as a strategic threat. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has gone as far as comparing the movement to terrorism.

Erdan leads Israel’s anti-BDS effort as Strategic Affairs Minister and hopes to compile a database of around 20 of the main Israelis involved in the BDS movement. Meanwhile, the Knesset passed a law earlier this month allowing the Interior Ministry to ban foreign BDS activists and supporters from the country.

According to Ronny Hatchwell, an industry relations manager for CCFP, said BDS influence against the Israeli concert industry “is growing, but it’s not working. In the last two years we can safely say that BDS has failed.”

Hatchwell added that the impact of BDS is much less than the financial burden of bringing artists to Israel. “The promoter has to take care of the ambulances, the police, the security, the whole thing, and they don’t get any government help,” he said. Moreover, equipment for an artist’s show is usually flown to Israel on a stopover from their European tours, adding extra financial burden.

The Britney Spears concert will cost more than two million dollars, according to the website of broadcaster Reshet.

Where BDS activists have impact is on smaller acts that more closely manage their brand and tours. “Floods and floods of pressure on social media, there are people who will write to them all day every day and that’s why the bigger artists aren’t usually effected,” said Nick Lieber, a project manager at CCFP. “Because if they get a hundred tweets a day from BDS activists, it’s a blip on the radar and they don’t even notice, but if you have 40,000 Twitter fans and people are writing to you all day, you are going to notice.”

Spears’s concert, which was announced in a swanky Tel Aviv hotel, looks like a done deal. However, just like every major artist who chooses to play in Israel, she will face mounting pressure. “Usually we face [BDS pressure] after the announcement,” remarked Bluestone Entertainment’s Beser. “Now it will start.”

Read the original article at The Jerusalem Post. 

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

Banksy – fostering dialogue or creating propaganda?

The British artist Banksy — who keeps his identity a secret — has opened a hotel in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The hotel itself is a work of art, which, according to the artist’s website, attempts to tell the story of the conflict from all sides and facilitate dialogue and understanding. They “offer an especially warm welcome to young Israelis” who wish to venture into the Palestinian city.

Though set to open later this month, the hotel’s opening ceremony was held this week, with British musician Sir Elton John (remotely) performing as the guest of honor.

Elton John was an excellent choice. Having performed in Israel multiple times, he has taken a strong stand against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement — which seeks to isolate Israel with the end goal of eliminating it as the Jewish state — and in favor of dialogue and cooperation.

“No one could have stopped me from coming here,” he said at his 2010 show in Tel Aviv. “We’re spreading peace and love on this stage and we’re happy to be here.”

We at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) — an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace and to countering the cultural boycott of Israel — applaud the opening of this hotel and its attempt at dialogue. As we have long believed, art broadens our horizons, opens us to new perspectives, and allows us to connect on the most basic human level.

While we hope that the hotel will serve this purpose just like Elton did in Tel Aviv, it is important to make some clarifications.

The first is that the hotel itself is located in a city that is under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, due to safety concerns, Jewish Israeli citizens are not generally permitted to enter these cities, making it rather difficult for Israelis to be part of the dialogue taking place within the hotel.

The second is that the security barrier itself has long served as a source of inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric against Israel, which has merely served to increase tension and dampen hope for rational dialogue. Banksy himself has been creating works of art on the barrier for quite some time, which unfortunately have shown a one sided view of the conflict.

The obvious choice of the location of the hotel and its namesake — alongside the security barrier — was selected for its symbolism. It is important to remember that, despite the ugliness of the barrier and the hardships it has certainly placed on Palestinian civilians, it was constructed to keep all citizens of Israel, be they Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze or Bedouin, safe from daily acts of terrorism.

Despite these challenges and concerns, we wish the hotel great success with its stated aim of creating dialogue through art. We encourage the hotel proprietors to not allow this hotel to become a one-sided marketing tool of propaganda, but instead to use art as a tool to truly bring people together and encourage thoughtful, engaged and respectful dialogue. We at CCFP will continue to work to accomplish the same, and offer our support to find new avenues of creative collaboration.

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

The Oscars and the BDS Victory that Wasn’t

We at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) — an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry dedicated to promoting the arts as a means to peace and to countering the cultural boycott of Israel — have long since noted that supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement are quick to falsely claim victories they haven’t truly earned.

For example, when Pharrell Williams and Natalie Imbruglia canceled their shows in Israel in 2016 and 2017, respectively, for reasons completely unrelated to politics, BDS activists falsely claimed that they did so in solidarity with the aims of their movement — which seeks to isolate Israel in the cultural, academic, economic, and diplomatic spheres with the end goal of eliminating it as the Jewish state.

Now, BDS activists are falsely claiming victory at the Oscars.

To read the rest of the piece on The Times of Israel, please click HERE.

CCFP Staff
In Press Release

To the NFL Delegation to Israel

We at Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) — an organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry dedicated to promoting the arts and culture as a means to peace and to countering the attempted cultural boycott of Israel — were happy to hear of your upcoming trip to Israel.

We are aware that there are groups opposed to the trip, and feel that it’s important to note that these groups are not merely opponents of particular actions of the Israeli government; they are opponents of Israel’s very right to exist. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, though often painting itself as a human rights movement, is in fact a political campaign aiming to create a Palestinian state — and only a Palestinian state — on the ashes of the Jewish, democratic State of Israel.

BDS asserts a very black and white narrative and actively works to prevent people — particularly influential peoples such as yourselves — from seeing anything they disagree with, anything that would add some shades of gray. We, however, are of the opinion that in order to learn about such a complex and often confusing region of the world, there’s nothing quite like brushing aside the screen of the media seeing it for oneself from a wide variety of angles.

We hope that while you’re in Israel, you’ll have the chance to contribute to a more peaceful future in the region by experiencing and supporting initiatives which bring together Israelis and Palestinians through sport. One of the biggest impediments to peace is that Israelis and Palestinians simply don’t understand one another, and there are numerous sport-based projects designed to correct that.

For example, the “Twinned Peace Sports Schools,” a project of the Peres Center For Peace, foster “values of peace and coexistence amongst young Palestinians and Israelis by changing attitudes toward the ‘other’ and diffusing stereotypes” through soccer. And Peace Players International uses basketball to bring Israelis and Palestinians together in a  “safe and neutral space where young people can begin to form deep personal bonds and lasting friendships.”

Sports — just like art and music — connect people across the world, allowing them to bridge even the biggest differences and to come together in peace.

We at CCFP wish you an enjoyable and illuminating trip.

 

CCFP Staff
In Article

Billboard: Creative Community for Peace on Urging Artists to Play Israel & Challenging Roger Waters to a Debate

Top music execs Craig Balsam & David Renzer discuss “the importance of building cultural bridges and not boycotts” in the face of the BDS movement.

A common love of music may have carried Craig Balsam (co-founder of Razor & Tie Entertainment), David Renzer (chairman of Spirit Music Group) and Steve Schnur (Electronic Arts’ worldwide executive and music president) to the top of the music business, but each is also engaged in another mutually shared passion: The Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), a group advocating for greater international cultural engagement with Israel.

The advocacy group, which began in 2012, has grown in the wake of the proliferation of the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel, which has led to high-profile Promise Land cancellations by touring musicians including Roger Waters, CeeLo Green, Annie Lennox, Lauryn Hill, The Pixies and Elvis Costello. (Other more high-profile cancellations, including by Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Lana Del Rey and Neil Young, cited the cause as security concerns or scheduling conflicts and not BDS.)

“We decided there needed to be a response to the BDS movement, because very few music executives are advocating for Israel,” Balsam says of the CCFP, which counts approximately 40 entertainment executives on its advisory board from the music, film and TV sectors in cities that include Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and London.

CCFP’s mission statement is a simple one: “Culture and arts help build bridges,” says Renzer. “We try to provide balance to the dialog. An example of the power of music to build bridges is that when an artist performs in Israel, the audience is made up of people from all religions — Christians, Muslims and Jews — and they’re all present together at concerts, which is not the case in many other countries. We also support organizations such as Polyphony, which sponsors classical orchestras made up of half Arab and half Israeli students.”

Cancellations in Israel by international acts is not a new phenomenon and dates back to the intifadas — the Palestinian uprisings of the late ’80s and early ’90s — and gained more traction in the mid-aughts with the launch of the BDS movement. The result is that the Israeli concert industry has lost millions because these called-off shows are most often not covered by insurance (a topic reported on in Billboard).

Waters is one of the BDS movement’s most high-profile and vocal proponents, preaching the protest movement’s message to boycott Israel and its government — which it considers an occupying force — from stages across the globe, most recently at Desert Trip and in two interviews with Billboard (“Roger Waters Shares What He Really Wanted to Say About Trump [and Clinton] at Desert Trip” and “Roger Waters Eviscerates ‘Racist, Sexist Pig’ Trump & Urges Israel ‘To End Occupation’ at Desert Trip“).

“He’s made some really outrageous statements,” says Balsam, who cites Waters’ use of words like “genocide,” “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” and comparisons to Nazism when describing the Israeli government’s policies. “We’re not trying to whitewash it and say Israel is perfect, but these terms are just factually incorrect, inflammatory and extreme, and it really troubles us.”

Balsam says one of CCFP’s messages is that performing in Israel is an opportunity for artists to see what’s going on for themselves. And further, if an artist is critical of the Israeli government, “They should go perform, stand on the stage and say you don’t like the current government. You can do that there. No one is going to arrest you. We don’t expect everyone to agree with every policy of the Israeli government, just like I wouldn’t expect everyone to agree with every policy of the U.S. government.”

CCFP also considers itself something of an information clearing house and resource for artists and their teams who may be concerned about playing Israel and/or facing pressure from the BDS movement.  Says Balsam: “What happens is, the minute an artist mentions they might play Israel or sets aside a date, they are barraged from many different angles. And it’s not just the artist who’s barraged; it’s the manager, sometimes it’s booking agents, and they don’t know what to make of it. What happened before CCFP was that they would just cancel the show because they felt very pressured and like they were doing the wrong thing. They didn’t really understand the issues and options. We felt we had to do something to support the artist community and encourage music to be played wherever in support of peaceful gatherings.”

The CCFP works directly with artists along with management and agents to identify additional causes and/or collaborations that resonate with an artist, their fans and others. “For example, we worked closely with Cyndi Lauper and her management in helping identify a program she could work with that appealed to her,” Renzer recalls. “She wanted to visit a LGBTQ center in Tel Aviv, which is something we helped facilitate. … When Alicia Keys announced a concert in Israel, she was slammed very hard by the boycott Israel movement. Not only did we work with her management team and agents, but we also connected her with a musician in Israel named Idan Raichel who is all about promoting music as a means of peace and co-existence and has a multi-ethnic and -religious band. She went on to perform in Israel with Muslim and Israeli musicians and even invited them to Central Park to perform with her. That’s a perfect example of how artists can utilize the power of music to help build bridges.”

Both Renzer and Balsam say they would welcome the opportunity to have a dialogue with Waters and mention that the other artists on the Desert Trip bill — The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan — have played the Holy Land (along with other top-tier acts, including Madonna, Lady Gaga, Metallica, Justin Bieber, Elton John and others). “I find it very ironic that he has a powerful platform and announced his new ‘Us and Them’ tour as being about the power of music to build bridges towards peace, and yet he’s saying some pretty incendiary things,” Renzer argues. “Frankly, we would love to challenge Roger Waters to debate in a public forum where we can talk about the facts and the issues.”

Ultimately, Razor & Tie’s Balsam says, it’s all for a higher purpose. “People have to live in peace,” he says. “Our hope is that by creating dialogue and conversation and education, there will someday be a peaceful resolution.”

See the original article on Billboard.com. 

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