There is increasing opposition to the appearance of the musician Roger Waters, one of the founders of the rock band Pink Floyd, in the Frankfurt Festhalle.

After Frankfurt Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg (Die Grünen) first called for the concert to be canceled, all promising candidates for the post of Frankfurt Mayor have now spoken out against the British musician's performance.

Both the CDU politician Uwe Becker, who is also Hessian anti-Semitism commissioner, as well as the Green candidate Manuela Rottmann and the Frankfurt SPD leader Mike Josef joined the call to cancel the concert planned for the end of May.

Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The musician has been criticized for supporting the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement for many years, which calls for a comprehensive boycott of the state of Israel.

Waters has long been accused of stirring up anti-Jewish resentment - for example by letting a plastic pig with a Star of David fly through the hall at his concerts.

"Waters is a bad example of aggressive, Israel-related anti-Semitism," said CDU politician Uwe Becker.

The city and state should decide to cancel

Mike Josef, Frankfurt's head of planning, is also a member of the supervisory board of Messe Frankfurt GmbH, which has rented the concert hall to the organizer of the Waters Tour.

In this function, the SPD politician has now submitted an application that the shareholders of the fair, the city of Frankfurt and the state of Hesse, jointly decide to cancel the concert.

The city holds 60 percent of the shares in the exhibition company, the state 40 percent.

Only when the city and state formulate a clear position could the managing directors of the trade fair actually stop the concert, says Josef.

That's why he now wants a quick positioning.

The BDS movement, of which Roger Waters is one of the leading and best-known figures, is particularly strong in the UK, with supporters mostly on the left, “post-colonial” spectrum.

In Germany, the dispute over anti-Semitic works of art at the "Documenta" in Kassel recently led to an argument about the boycott movement.

BDS appeals had been signed by some members of the Indonesian collective Ruangrupa, which curated the art exhibition.

“Money must not play a role in the fight against hatred of Jews”

The alliance not only calls for an economic boycott of the Israeli state, but also puts pressure on artists who want to perform in Israel.

A whole range of musicians have bowed to these "shitstorms": Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill and the New Zealand singer Lorde, for example, canceled planned performances in Israel after they became the focus of BDS activists.

Others, like the band Radiohead, resisted the pressure.

Roger Waters has not only attracted negative attention for his anti-Israel propaganda, but also for his positions on the Ukraine war.

In an open letter to Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he expressed the view that Ukraine's policies had sparked the war.

In an interview, he called the American president a "war criminal" and blamed NATO for the escalation in Ukraine.

He received applause for this directly from the Kremlin: Dmitri Medvedev, head of Putin's party "United Russia" and deputy head of the Russian Security Council, expressly praised Waters.

If the trade fair actually decides to cancel the concert, it would probably have to pay compensation to the tour organizer.

Publicist Michel Friedman has already advocated accepting this if necessary.

"Money must not play a role in the fight against hatred of Jews," he told the "Bild" newspaper.