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Controversy at the 92Y: Pink Floyd’s Waters Releases Flood of Outrage

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Roger Waters, co-lead vocalist of Pink Floyd has endorsed the BDS movement against Israel. His scheduled appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York has been cancelled.
Roger Waters, co-lead vocalist of Pink Floyd has endorsed the BDS movement against Israel. His scheduled appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York has been cancelled.
To classic rock n’ roll afficionados throughout the world, Rogers Waters is best known as the founder, bass player, co-lead vocalist, lyricist and principal songwriter in the pioneering British band Pink Floyd.  His seminal songs soared to the top of the charts in the late 1970s and 80s, but now it has been reported that Waters has assumed a vehemently anti-Israel posture and has taken the plunge into the nefarious world of celebrities who have morphed into politicos.

A polemical debate of sorts erupted in the media when it was reported that Waters was to have appeared on April 30th as a featured speaker at the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s upper east side. Because of his sordid past consisting of anti-Israel activism, Waters has raised the ire of many Jewish leaders including President of JCC Watch, Richard Allen, former UJA Chairman Irwin Hochberg, and CUNY trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld.

“I believe that the philosophy that Waters is expounding is universally detestable and to host him at a prominent Jewish center like the 92nd Street Y is tantamount to a grievous disservice to the community,” declared Mr. Wiesenfeld.

As a staunch opponent of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, Waters is a public endorser of the European “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) movement against Israel which seeks to impose economic sanctions on her until the issue of sovereignty for the Palestinians is addressed.

In a recent interview with Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian media outlet, Waters boasted that he was one of several dignitaries who persuaded iconic soul singer Stevie Wonder to cancel his scheduled performance at the Los Angeles gala dinner of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) that took place this past December.

“I wrote a letter to him saying that this would be like playing a police ball in Johannesburg the day after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960,” Waters said. “It wouldn’t be a great thing to do, particularly as he was meant to be a U.N. ambassador for peace.”

During the interview, Waters compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with the treatment of blacks in South Africa under the apartheid regime and argued sanctions against the Jewish state were the most “effective way to go” because the situation, he says, is that the Israeli government runs an apartheid regime in Israel, the occupied territories and everywhere else it decides.

In a March 31st article by Eileen Toplansky that appeared on the American Thinker web site in which the issue of Roger Waters’ upcoming appearance at the 92nd Street Y is addressed, she writes: “In 2010 Waters was accused by Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), of using the Star of David in a sequence that echoed the stereotype that Jews were avaricious.

In 2011, Waters wrote a piece entitled “Tear down this Israeli wall” referring to the fence that Israel was forced to erect in order to stop suicide bombers who were wreaking unimaginable havoc on Jewish and Arab Israelis.”

Waters has also called for cultural boycotts of Israel and in October of 2012, along with other celebrities such as author Alice Walker and Palestinian American poet and activist Remi Kanazi, signed a letter addressed to Carnegie Hall in New York City, in which he exhorted them to cancel a performance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and to “respect the Palestinian-led boycott.”

The letter in which Waters and his contemporaries signed stated in part that, “We are dismayed by Carnegie Hall’s upcoming October 2012 hosting of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The IPO is an organization that whitewashes Israel’s ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians. The IPO is not an apolitical cultural institution; it is actively complicit in whitewashing Israeli human rights abuses, apartheid, and occupation of Palestinian land.”

According to the article penned by Ms. Toplansky on Waters, she says that the, “92nd Street Y is one of many agencies that receives funding from the UJA-Federation of New York.”  She then queries: “What can be said about the 92nd Street Y’s moral compass and commitment to human rights if a proponent of BDS is given this kind of forum with “the power to rapidly erode the moral standing of Israel in the world?”

According to Richard Allen, an outspoken advocate for Israel and a panoply of Jewish causes as well as the leader of JCC Watch, “the UJA funds the 92nd Street Y to the tune of $800,000 a year. Donors believe that their dollars are being disbursed by the UJA to causes and institutions that support Israel and reflect their views and clearly Roger Waters’ insistence on spewing forth propaganda about Israel does not even remotely resemble their views.”

Calls placed to the executive staff at 92nd Street Y for their comments by the Jewish Voice were not returned at the time of publication

“I do know that more conventional political people are in governance at the 92nd Street Y and I don’t believe in any way that its executive director, Sol Adler, countenanced this event,” declared Mr. Wiesenfeld.

As of publication, the 92nd Street Y web site has indicated that “The conversation with Roger Waters” event has now been cancelled and money will be refunded in full to ticket holders. Reason for cancellation was not specified.

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