Australian Rock Star Nick Cave Rejects BDS in Tel Aviv: “I Love Israel”

November 22, 2017

< 1 minute

Australian rock star Nick Cave is facing backlash from Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) supporters following a performance in Tel Aviv, where he accused the anti-Israel movement of trying to bully and censor him.

In a statement on Tuesday, former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, a leader of the boycott of Israel by performing artists, said he “read Nick Cave’s press conference statements with a mixture of sorrow, rage and disbelief.”

“What if it was your demolished home? Your invaded country? Your villages razed to the ground to build stadiums for the invaders to promote pop concerts on?” Waters said. “Nick thinks this is about censorship of his music? What? Nick, with all due respect, your music is irrelevant to this issue, so is mine, so is Brian Eno’s, so is Beethoven’s….This isn’t about music, it’s about human rights.”

During a press conference prior to his performance on Sunday in Tel Aviv, Cave said he had faced pressure from the BDS movement to cancel his shows in Israel, and that he had been approached by record producer Brian Eno to sign a boycott list. But Cave said he wanted to take a “principled stand against anyone who wants to censor and silence musicians.”

“On a very intuitive level I did not want to sign that [boycott], there was something that stunk to me about that list,” Cave said.

“So at the end of the day, there are two reasons why I’m here. One is that I love Israel and I love Israeli people, and two is to make a principled stand against anyone who wants to censor and silence musicians. So really, you could say in a way that the BDS made me play Israel,” he said.

Share this article

Donate today to support Israel’s needy

$10

$25

$50

$100

$250

CUSTOM AMOUNT

Subscribe

Prophecy from the Bible is revealing itself as we speak. Israel365 News is the only media outlet reporting on it.

Sign up to our free daily newsletter today to get all the most important stories directly to your inbox. See how the latest updates in Jerusalem and the world are connected to the prophecies we read in the Bible. .