Roger Waters has responded to Nick Cave criticising his stance on an Israel boycott, telling him “it’s not complicated.”
In an episode published on Wednesday (August 28) of the Reason podcast, which Cave guested, he said Roger Waters’ support of the BDS movement is “embarrassing” and “deeply damaging.”
In an Instagram reel posted to his 1.3million followers, the Pink Floyd co-founder explained that the Independent ran a piece about Cave’s statements and reached out to him for a comment. “Let’s see if they fucking publish it or not,” Waters said in the video, and read his comment aloud.
He said, in part: “Dear Independent, here is my response to the Aussie bloke. Nick Cave. Nick fucking Cave. The Palestinian mother/father carrying the bits of her or his dead child back along the bitter road to nowhere in a plastic bag pauses on the roadside to scratch a message in the rubble. Nick, here’s the message.
“Dear Nick Cave, we, the Indigenous people of Palestine, in this agony, implore you, please don’t cross the BDS picket line to sing for your supper in Israel. It’s not complicated, Nick. It’s not complicated.
“That act — singing for your supper in Israel, Nick — that act serves to whitewash the 75-year-old Zionist Israeli occupation, land theft, apartheid, and genocide of our people, Nick. Please, please, please follow the example of Roger Waters and Brian Eno and many, many thousands of others who are active in the BDS movement. Nick, pay attention.” Watch the full clip below.
Waters, now 80, has been a supporter of the boycott (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions or BDS) movement since 2011.
In 2018, Waters and Brian Eno were among the prominent figures advocating for a boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Tel Aviv that year, as they reiterated their support for the movement. Cave also criticised Eno in the Reason podcast episode.
Throughout the summer musicians and bands have been boycotting some festivals over their ties with Israel. Four bands to pulled out of Download 2024 over its sponsorship with Barclays and the bank’s ties to Israel.
In May over a quarter of the acts billed to play at The Great Escape Festival in Brighton pulled out in support of Palestine – also due to the festival’s sponsorship by Barclays bank.
On Friday (August 30) Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds released their latest album ‘Wild God’, which NME gave four stars in a review. It reads: “Bad Seeds records are infamously loaded with gothic doom and gloom. Of course, this ain’t a poptastic LOLfest, and still coloured with the many shades of a life so challenging and weathered… with a lust for life, the once-dark prince is letting the light in.”