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Roger Waters open letter calling for a boycott of Israel http://www.cboicotisrael.blogspot.com/

In 1980, I wrote a song, Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, was banned by the South African government because it was used by black children South Africans to claim their right to equal education. That government imposed a blockade of cultural apartheid, so to speak, on some songs, including mine. Twenty years later, in 2005, Palestinian children who were attending a festival in the West Bank used the song to protest against the Israeli apartheid wall. They and they sang: "We do not need the occupation! We do not need the racist wall! "At that time, I had not seen it with my own eyes that what they were singing.

A year later, in 2006, was hired to perform in Tel Aviv.

Palestinian movement Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but did not believe that a cultural boycott was a correct way. Palestinian supporters of the boycott called me into visiting the occupied Palestinian territory to see the wall with my eyes before making a decision. I accepted.

Under the protection of United Nations visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The building wall is repulsive. Is guarded by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, the casual observer from another world, with an aggression full of contempt. If it was me, a foreigner, imagine what should be with the Palestinians, with subproletarians, with carriers of authorizations. I knew then that my conscience would not let me fall away from the wall, the fate of the Palestinians I met, people whose lives are crushed daily in a thousand and one ways for the occupation of Israel. In solidarity, and some form of impotence, I wrote on the wall that day: "We do not need the control of ideas."

Whereas at the time that my presence at a scene of Tel Aviv would inadvertently legitimize the oppression that I had just witnessed, I canceled my concert in a football stadium in Tel Aviv and I changed to Neve-Shalom, a community farm dedicated to raising chickens and admirably to cooperation between people of different beliefs, where Muslims, Christians and Jews live and work lada by side in harmony.

Against all expectations, this event became the biggest musical event of the short history of Israel. To attend, some 60 thousand fans fought the traffic jams. It was extremely moving for me and the band and at the end of the concert, bound to encourage the youth to demand their government to achieve peace with its neighbors and to respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.

Unfortunately, the years that followed, the Israeli government made no attempt to enact legislation to ensure the Israeli Arab civil rights equal to those of Israeli Jews, and the wall grew inexorably annexing more and more the West Bank.

learned on that day in 2006, in Bethlehem, some of what it means to live under occupation, imprisoned behind a wall. Means that a Palestinian farmer has to see how ancient olive trees are uprooted. Means that a Palestinian student can not go to school because the passing of control is closed. Means that a woman can give birth in a car, because the soldier will not let go to the hospital which is ten minutes from there. Means that a Palestinian artist is unable to travel abroad to showcase their work or to show the film in an international festival. For the population of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison wall behind the illegal blockade of Israel, means a number of other injustices. Means that children go to bed hungry, many of them chronically malnourished. Means that parents, preventing them from working in a decimated economy, have no means of supporting their families. Means that college students with scholarships to study abroad have to find a chance to escape because they are not authorized to travel.
In my opinion, disgusting and draconian control exercised by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza fence and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and the denial of the right of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, requires people with a sense of justice throughout the world to support Palestinian civil resistance, non-violent.

where governments refuse to act, people must, by the peaceful means that we would have at their disposal. For some this meant to join the Freedom March in Gaza, for others it meant joining the fleet tried to bring humanitarian Gaza much needed humanitarian aid.

that means for me declare my intention to stay united, not only with the support of the people of Palestine, but with many thousands of Israelis who disagree with the racist and colonial policies of their government, joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it grants the three basic human rights required by international law.

1. Ending the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands (occupied since 1967) and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel in full equality, and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in Resolution 194, United Nations.

My conviction stems from the idea that all people deserve basic human rights. My position is not anti-Semitic. This is not an attack on the people of Israel. This is, therefore, call upon my colleagues in the music industry and artists from other areas to join the cultural boycott.

artists were right to refuse to act in Sun City, South Africa until apartheid fell, and even blacks and whites might enjoy the same rights. And we have rights to refuse to perform in Israel until the day, and that day will surely come-on to drop the wall of the occupation and the Palestinians live alongside Israelis in peace, freedom, justice and dignity for all they deserve.

* Roger Waters is a musician who was one of the founding members of rock group Pink Floyd. Source: http://imeu.net, March 7, 2011, www.sinpermiso.info translation: Carlos Abel Suarez.