Reggae singer Matisyahu says that he felt physically threatened during his performance at the Rototom Sunsplash Festival in Spain. He emphasized that this was the first time he ever had such a reaction.
"People were standing on each other’s shoulders with flags giving me the middle finger,” he told the Daily Beast. “It was intense. It was not peaceful. It was like ‘F*** you, Matisyahu.’ I’ve never had the experience of anything like that, as a Jew or anything in my life."
Even thoughMatisyahu is not Israeli, BDS activists pressured the festival into dropping him unless he published a statement condemning Israel. The move sparked a widespread backlash against the singling out of a Jewish singer based on his ethnicity. Festival organizers reinvited Matisyahu, although many audience members held out Palestinian flags and heckled him.