Roger Waters’ anti-Israel message ignites ‘wish you weren’t here’ campaign by Latin American Jews

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – Jewish institutions in Argentina have launched a campaign against former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters over his support for the boycott Israel movement.

Waters’ “Us +Them” tour has been traveling throughout Latin America for the past month and will continue into December.

The Argentina Zionist Organization’s online campaign urges residents of the region to reject the British singer’s presence and upcoming concerts. The campaign calls Waters “one of the great anti-Semites of our time” to protest what it called his hate speech.

“We, Latin Americans, say to Roger Waters – we wish you weren’t here!” – echoing the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here,” its Change.org campaign says.

Officials at the Simon Wiesenthal Center officials called on the tour’s corporate sponsors, including Entel, Cencosud, Grupo Aval and Bac Credomatic y Citibanamex, to withdraw their financial support. The center also said Waters’ Latin American hosts should denounce his abuse of their hospitality and his message of hate.

On Friday, Waters participated in an event of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel in Buenos Aires, a day before performing there.

“We must insist to our local governments to pressure Israel, in favor of the human rights of the Palestinians,” he said at the program titled “A World Without Walls,” organized by BDS Argentina.

Waters at his shows has displayed a pig with a Star of David.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center made a connection between has noted that medieval anti-Semites used an iconography that featured a Jewish pig or Judensau to humiliate and dehumanize Jews.

“Using this symbol treated with the technology of the 21st century, Waters contributes to the array of anti-Semitic hatred,” the center said in a statement

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“Waters came to Uruguay and Argentina to promote BDS — Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions — declared illegitimate in a growing number of European jurisdictions as based on the attacks in Nazi Germany on Jewish shops and enterprises to the cries of “Kaufen nicht bei Juden” (No Buying from Jews),” Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s director for International Relations, said in a statement issued Friday. “The timing of his hatefest tour led up to today’s 80th anniversary of ‘Kristallnacht’ (the Night of Broken Glass).

“Across Germany and Austria, 1,500 synagogues were torched and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps,” he wrote of the pogroms.

Samuels said Waters “should be treated as persona non grata in all democratic countries.”