TEL AVIV – Legendary crooner Lionel Richie said he “couldn’t wait” for his upcoming performance in Israel, set to coincide with the national elections on March 2.
“Hello Israel, this is Lionel Richie, and I can’t wait to perform in Israel for the first time ever,” the singer, 70, said in a video message posted to his Facebook page.
“We’re going to dance all night long. So go to vote and I’ll see you on the second of March in Tel Aviv. See you then.”
The concert was brought forward from 8:30pm to 7pm so as not to clash with the election exit polls released at 10pm.
Richie sparked ire from anti-Israel group Code Pink after he blocked them on Twitter last August. The pro-BDS group launched an aggressive campaign calling on the “Endless Love” singer to cancel his Tel Aviv performance with a petition that accused Israel of “oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people” and “racist demographic engineering.”
“If you choose to follow through with your performance in Tel Aviv, it will act as an endorsement of Israel’s brutal systems of military occupation and apartheid,” the group wrote.
Although this will be Richie’s first concert in Israel, the 70-year-old singer has been a supporter of the Jewish state for many years. In 2013, he performed at a Friends of the IDF fundraiser in Los Angeles.
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