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Major League Baseball to Stop Promoting Anti-Israel Roger Waters Following Complaints
by Shiryn Ghermezian
Roger Waters. Photo: Jethro via Wikimedia Commons.
Major League Baseball has announced that it will stop featuring advertisements on its platforms that promote musician and anti-Israel activist Roger Waters, The Associated Press reported on Saturday. The move follows sharp criticism of the promotion from major Jewish groups.
MLB.com was among the organizations sponsoring ticket presales for Waters’ upcoming “This Is Not a Drill” tour. MLB has said the promotion was part of an ad buy by AEG/Concerts West for multiple concert tours.
In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, B’nai B’rith International President Charles O. Kaufman and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin criticized MLB’s promotion of the tour, and said Waters’ views on Jews and Israel “far exceed the boundaries of civil discourse.”
“He participates in the discriminatory, anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and castigates other musicians for performing in Israel,” they added. “He has blamed ‘the Jewish Lobby’ for intimidating anti-Israel critics like him. And he has falsely labeled the Jewish state a ‘racist apartheid regime’ and claimed Israel is guilty of ‘ethnic cleansing.’”
The Zionist Organization of America said it was “horrified” by MLB’s involvement in selling tickets for Waters’ tour, “especially in an era when attacks against American Jews have become an epidemic.” The activist group said, “MLB’s promotion of Waters give Waters’ Jew-hatred its stamp of approval and legitimizes Israelophobia.”
B’nai B’rith said in a statement on Friday that MLB told it “there are no plans to schedule any more ads on the MLB platforms,” and MLB later confirmed B’nai B’rith’s statement.
