Roger Waters faces hotel ban amid 'anti-Semitism' row

A complaint of "anti-Semitism" was filed against Roger Waters in Argentina on Nov. 15 as the former Pink Floyd frontman, on tour, accused "the Israeli lobby" of barring him from hotels in South America.

Waters, just off several concerts in Brazil as part of his "This Is Not a Drill" tour, is scheduled to perform in Montevideo today, followed by Buenos Aires next week.

But the British-born performer, a known critic of the Israeli government, told Argentina's Pagina 12 newspaper he has no choice but to stay in lodgings in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

"Somehow these idiots of the Israeli lobby managed to co-opt all the hotels in Buenos Aires and Montevideo and organized this extraordinary boycott based on the malicious lies... about me," Pagina 12 quoted him as saying in an article published in Spanish.

Waters added: "I have not had a single anti-Semitic thought in my entire life," and insisted his criticism was of the Israeli government's actions.

Nevertheless, lawyer Carlos Broitman told AFP he had filed a complaint against Waters with a federal court, considering his visit was an opportunity for the artist to "spread his message of hate and to incite or aggravate anti-Semitism."

Argentina has Latin America's largest Jewish population, with some 250,000 individuals.

In neighboring Uruguay, the presidents of the Central Israelite Committee, Roby Schindler, and of the Jewish NGO B'Nai B'Rith, Franklin Rosenfeld, accused Rogers of being a "propagator" of Jewish hatred, in letters addressed to Sofitel and disseminated on social media.

Schindler called Waters a "misogynist, xenophobe and anti-Semitic" while Rosenfeld threatened an anti-Sofitel campaign if the hotel hosted the "anti-Semitic artist."

Waters, one of the...