Roger Waters launches legal action against German city authorities for branding him a ‘well known antisemite’

Roger Waters has denounced antisemitism in a statement issued by his lawyers. It comes after the former Pink Floyd bassist, a leading proponent of the movement to boycott Israel, was blocked from performing in Frankfurt after the city called him “one of the world’s most well known antisemites.”

The decision was approved by the Magistrate of the City of Frankfurt on 24 February.

Days later, he was blocked from playing at Munich Olympiahalle by the city’s council, on the basis that he “keeps stirring up antisemitic resentment” and spreads “conspiracy ideologies that justify Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.”

Waters had been scheduled to perform May 28 at Frankfurt’s Festhalle, which during the Holocaust was the site of the deportation of 3,000 Jews to their deaths just after Kristallnacht.

The city of Frankfurt noted the historical significance of the concert hall, which it partly owns, in  announcing that it was canceling Waters’ planned concert. It cited Waters’ longstanding anti-Israel activism.

“The background to the cancellation is the persistent anti-Israel behaviour of the former Pink Floyd frontman, who is considered one of the most widely spread antisemites in the world,” the city said in a statement.

“He repeatedly called for a cultural boycott of Israel and drew comparisons to the apartheid regime in South Africa and put pressure on artists to cancel events in Israel.”

In February of this year, the wife of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour accused Waters of being “antisemitic to your rotten core

In taking legal action against the proposed cancellations, the statement read: “My lawyers are taking steps to ensure that my concerts in Munich and Frankfurt in May 2023 take place as contracted. Human rights and freedom of speech for all peoples under German law must prevail, which is why I’m taking this stance to ensure the will of the few will not prevent me from performing in Frankfurt and Munich.

I am taking the unprecedented step of appealing to the law to protect me from the unconstitutional actions of two authorities which seem to rely upon the fundamentally false accusation that has been made against me; namely that I am antisemitic. I want to state for the record and once and for all that I am not and never have been antisemitic and nothing that anyone can say or publish will alter that. My well-publicized views relate entirely to the policies and actions of the Israeli government and not with the peoples of Israel. Antisemitism is odious and racist, and I condemn it, along with all forms of racism unreservedly.”

In addition to backing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, Waters’ has flown a pig-shaped balloon bearing a Star of David at his concerts, spoken about the alleged power of a nefarious Jewish lobby in the United States and compared Israeli actions in the West Bank to South Africa under apartheid and Nazi Germany.

In February of this year, the wife of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour accused Waters of being “antisemitic to your rotten core”, in a row over his stance on Israel and the Ukraine war.