VENICE, ITALY – SEPTEMBER 06: Roger Waters attends the “Roger Waters Us + Them” Photocall during the 76th Venice Film Festival at on September 06, 2019 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images) During a May 15 online performance, former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters sang that Palestinians will “take back the land, from the Jordan river to the sea.”
The Jewish Chronicle reported Waters was participating in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s (PSC) virtual Nakba Day 2020 event. “Nakba,” which is Arabic for “catastrophe,” is a reference to the 700,000 Palestinian Arabs displaced during the 1948 War for Independence. Waters, who was wearing a Palestinian kaffiyeh, accused the Israeli government as well as what he called the Israel lobby of silencing pro-Palestinian voices.
He then performed a song that had the lyrics “We’ll walk hand-in-hand and we’ll take back the land, from the Jordan River to the sea.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted, “Leave it to anti-Semite @rogerwaters
to put Palestinian terrorists’ genocidal credo to music. Proud Jews have three-word response: Am Yisrael Chai! The People of Israel lives!”
Leave it to anti-Semite @rogerwaters to put Palestinian terrorists’ genocidal credo to music. Proud Jews have three-word response: Am Yisrael Chai! The People of Israel lives! https://t.co/r3IyVnuBsr via @jewishchron
— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) May 18, 2020
StandWithUs UK pointed out in a tweet that Waters’ lyrics echoed “the famous chant by terrorist group Hamas.”
#Antisemite and Pink Floyd star Rodger Waters is at it again…During an online #NakbaDay event, he sang the words, 'We'll walk hand in hand and we'll take back the land, from the Jordan River to the sea,' echoing the famous chant by terrorist group Hamas. https://t.co/omO7kmLFvI
— StandWithUsUK (@StandWithUsUK) May 19, 2020
On May 19, Waters accused his former Pink Floyd bandmate, guitarist David Gilmour, of banning him from Pink Floyd’s website.
“I think [Gilmour] thinks that because I left the band in 1985, that he owns Pink Floyd, that he is Pink Floyd, and I’m irrelevant and I should just keep my mouth shut,” Waters said in a Twitter video.
He added, “We’re not allowed to even mention [my projects] on the official Pink Floyd website. This is wrong.”
Pro-Israel activist Arsen Ostrovsky tweeted, “Good riddance to @rogerwaters, that racist, bigot and anti-Semite! The more he spouts his vile hate, the more he sullies the good name of @pinkfloyd.”
Good riddance to @rogerwaters, that racist, bigot and Antisemite! The more he spouts his vile hate, the more he sullies the good name of @pinkfloyd. https://t.co/sc43bMjruq
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 19, 2020
Waters has long been an avid supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, and has engaged in campaigns to discourage musicians from performing in Israel.
David Draiman, lead singer of heavy metal band Disturbed, has criticized Waters on this matter, saying in a May 2019 interview with a Disturbed Facebook fan page, “The very notion that Waters and the rest of his Nazi comrades decide that this is the way to go ahead and foster change is absolute lunacy and idiocy. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s only based on hatred of a culture and of a people in a society that has been demonized unjustifiably since the beginning of time.”
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.