Organisers of a Spanish reggae festival on Wednesday apologised to a Jewish American singer and reinvited him to perform, after previously cancelling his concert for failing to clarify his position on Palestine. Rototom Sunsplash festival organizers said on their Facebook page they canceled the August 22, 2015 concert because the singer declined “to declare himself regarding the war and in particular the right of the Palestinian people to have their own state”.
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The decision by the Rototom SunSplash festival to pull Matisyahu, who fuses reggae and hip-hop with Jewish influences, from its line-up was criticised by Jewish groups, the Spanish government and the US and Israeli embassies in Spain.
“Rototom publicly apologizes for canceling Matisyahu’s concert and announces that he has been invited to perform on Saturday, August 22 at the festival, as originally scheduled”, it says.
The World Jewish Congress suggested Spain should consider recuperating public funding for the festival, being held this week in eastern Spain.
The World Jewish Congress and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain hailed the reversal Wednesday and thanked the organizers.
A spokesperson for Matisyahu was not immediately available to disclose if the singer will now attend.
In a letter sent to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Tuesday, WJC President Lauder encouraged Spanish politicians to speak out, and said: “The organizers have done the honorable thing and apologized”.
It said Spain understood the Jewish communities’ unease, adding that Spain opposed boycott campaigns against Israel.
The organizers said had slipped up stressed from activists that require a proscribe and punishment on Israel over its coverages in the direction of Palestinians.
But that minuscule amount was enough to convince the supposedly not anti-Semitic organizers to ban Matisyahu – a move that was condemned by the Spanish Foreign Ministry and at least one top Spanish newspaper that is often critical of the Israeli government, writing in an editorial that trying to force Matisyahu to issue a declaration in support of a Palestinian state and then banning him when her refused to do so was the equivalent of “unacceptable discrimination”. He was the only artist asked to do so.
In the statements, the organizers said the festival has always supported the Palestinian people’s rights and denied they had cowed to the pro-Palestinian group. The statement cited a “campaign of pressure, coercion and threats” against it that stoked fears the festival would be disrupted and “prevented the organization from reasoning clearly”.
In its statement Rototom SunSplash said it “rejects anti-Semitism and any form of discrimination towards the Jewish community”.
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On his Facebook page, Matisyahu – whose name is Matthew Miller – Monday described the decision as “appalling”.
