Nick Cave, Roger Waters and Brian Eno have rehashed their weeks old debate about culture in Israel. Waters and Eno, among many other artists, have consistently delivered a letter to any prominent musician performing in Israel urging them not to go. Nick Cave, never an exception, recently found himself at the wrong end of their Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS.

The BDS movement encourages a boycott of Israel in response to policies which the UN has deemed as violating human rights. Cave made it known that he had agreed not to play a show in Israel years earlier without going so far as to sign anything. Eno apparently didn’t think much of Cave’s refusal to sign.

“It suddenly became very important to make a stand, to me, against those people who are trying to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians and to silence musicians,” says Cave.

Eno and Cave are fighting slightly different battles. Eno wants a cultural boycott of Israel, he and his friends are very specific with their request. Cave wants musicians to be free to play where they want. However, he mainly wants to invalidate their cultural boycott, regardless of his politics. He said in a statement, “you could say, in a way, that the BDS made me play Israel.” Cave went so far as to say he’s playing the show specifically to spite the BDS.

“If you do come [to Israel],” Cave said, “you have to go through public humiliation from Roger Waters and his partners and no one wants to embarrass themselves publicly.”

Perhaps there is a compromise here. Musicians might be more willing to hear out the BDS if it tweaked its tactics, if it made its disapproval less public. Artists do not like feeling like they have crossed a picket line. Cave sought to make the picketers rise up against the revolution, and perhaps some good can come of it, but probably not.

Photography Credit: Raymond Flotat