{"id":70199,"date":"2016-02-29T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=70199"},"modified":"2016-02-22T15:05:52","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T15:05:52","slug":"roger-waters-pink-floyd-star-on-why-his-fellow-musicians-are-terrified-to-speak-out-against-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/02\/roger-waters-pink-floyd-star-on-why-his-fellow-musicians-are-terrified-to-speak-out-against-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Waters: Pink Floyd Star on Why His Fellow Musicians Are Terrified to Speak Out against Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘If they say something they will no longer have a career \u2013\u00a0I have been accused of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite’.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Walters:<\/a>

Walters: ‘I have been accused of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite’ Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

19 Feb 2016 – <\/em>American musicians who support boycotting Israel over the issue of Palestinian rights are terrified to speak out for fear their careers will be destroyed, according to Roger Waters.<\/p>\n

The Pink Floyd star \u2013 a prominent supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel since its inception 10 years ago \u2013 said the experience of seeing himself constantly labelled a Nazi and anti-Semite had scared people into silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only response to BDS is that it is anti-Semitic,\u201d Waters told The Independent<\/em>, in his first major UK interview about his commitment to Israeli activism. \u201cI know this because I have been accused of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite for the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy industry has been particularly recalcitrant in even raising a voice [against Israel]. There\u2019s me and Elvis Costello, Brian Eno, Manic Street Preachers, one or two others, but there\u2019s nobody in the United States where I live. I\u2019ve talked to a lot of them, and they are scared s***less.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they say something in public they will no longer have a career. They will be destroyed. I\u2019m hoping to encourage some of them to stop being frightened and to stand up and be counted, because we need them. We need them desperately in this conversation in the same way we needed musicians to join protesters over Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waters likened Israeli treatment of Palestinians to apartheid South Africa. \u201cThe way apartheid South Africa treated its black population, pretending they had some kind of autonomy, was a lie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as it is a lie now that there is any possibility under the current status quo of Palestinians achieving self-determination and achieving, at least, a rule of law where they can live and raise their children and start their own industries. This is an ancient, brilliant, artistic and very humane civilisation that is being destroyed in front of our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

A trip to Israel in 2006, where Waters had planned to play a gig in Tel Aviv and the end of the European leg of his Dark Side of the Moon Live tour, transformed his view of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\"Roger<\/a>

Roger Waters alludes to the band\u2019s lyrics while painting on the Israeli-Palestinian security barrier in Bethlehem in 2006 (Getty)<\/p><\/div>\n

After speaking to Palestinian artists as well as Israeli anti-government protesters, who called on him to use the gig as a platform to speak out against Israeli foreign policy, he switched the concert from Hayarkon Park to Neve Shalom, an Arab\/Israeli peace village. But as the tickets had already been sold, the audience was still entirely Jewish Israeli.<\/p>\n

Waters said: \u201cIt was very strange performing to a completely segregated audience because there were no Palestinians there. There were just 60,000 Jewish Israelis, who could not have been more welcoming, nice and loyal to Pink Floyd. Nevertheless, it left an uncomfortable feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

He travelled around the West Bank towns of Jenin, Ramallah and Nablus, seeing how the two communities were segregated \u2013 and also visited the security barrier separating Israel from the Occupied Territories spraying a signed message from his seminal work \u201cAnother Brick in the Wall\u201d, which read: \u201cWe don\u2019t need no thought control\u201d.<\/p>\n

Waters soon joined the BDS movement, inviting opprobrium and condemnation for daring to do what so few musicians are prepared to. \u201cI\u2019m glad I did it,\u201d he says, as people in Israeli are \u201ctreated very unequally depending on their ethnicity. So Palestinian Israeli citizens and the Bedouin are treated completely different from Jewish citizens. There are 40 to 50 different laws depending on whether you are or you are not Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waters expected to be shouted down by critics, but it is the Nazi accusations that he considers the most absurd, especially given that his father, Lt Eric Waters of the 8th Royal Fusilliers, died aged 31 fighting the Nazis at Anzio, Italy, in early 1944. His body was never found but his name is commemorated at the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery at Monte Cassino.<\/p>\n

The pain of not knowing his father, who was killed when Waters was five months old, influenced some of Pink Floyd\u2019s most famous songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have veterans coming to all my shows and meet them at half time. At a gig in 2013, one veteran came up to me, took my hand, wouldn\u2019t let go and looked me in the eye\u2026 I can hardly tell you this now without welling up. He said: \u2018Your father would have been proud of you.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father died fighting the Nazis, my mother [a strong CND and Labour supporter] devoted her life to doing everything she could to create a more humane world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are asking questions that have never been asked until the last couple of years, which are bringing the wrath of the Israeli lobby down on people like me and all the others who dare to question and criticise.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The Israeli lobby] is determined not to let that conversation develop into one that people can listen to and that is why they accuse us of being Nazis. This idea that BDS is the thin end of some kind of genocidal Nazi wedge that ends up in another Holocaust \u2013 well it isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick Mason, Pink Floyd\u2019s drummer, wrote of Waters in his autobiography: \u201cOnce he sees a confrontation as necessary he is so grimly committed to winning that he throws everything into the fray \u2013 and his everything can be pretty scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s incoming ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s former spokesman, seems to be the next man in Waters\u2019 sights over \u201cthis battle of words\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI can tell you what Mark Regev is going to say about any situation. He is going to say: \u2018What would you do if your children were being slaughtered by terrorists? Do we not have a right to defend ourselves?\u2019 And that is the mantra.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waters cites growing activism on US university campuses, often by Jewish students, as reason for optimism that the status quo may change in his lifetime. He often writes letters to those students who, he said, are set to play as important a role in the future of Israel as the anti-Vietnam War protesters played in influencing US foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes my heart sing to see these young kids organising themselves and I applaud them for taking a stand in what they believe in the face of such huge opposition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are brave young people and they cannot be bought. They believe in their attachment and love for other human beings. We do not believe in the building of walls. It\u2019s so important we understand our humanity and co-operate with one another to create a better place for our children and grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Paul Gallagher is a reporter for the<\/em> Independent and<\/em> Independent on Sunday having joined the group in 2012. He has previously worked for the<\/em> European Voice, Daily Mirror and the<\/em> Observer and been based in Brussels, Belfast, Tokyo and London.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf they say something they will no longer have a career. The only response to BDS is that it is anti-Semitic,\u201d Waters told The Independent, in his first major UK interview about his commitment to Israeli activism. \u201cI know this because I have been accused of being a Nazi and an anti-Semite for the past 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}