The War on Roger Waters rages over comparing Israel to Nazis

Roger Waters beside the Israeli Apartheid Wall

Remarks by the musician Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, comparing the modern Israeli state to Nazi Germany have put him at the center of a furious dispute.

Waters, 70, a well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause, has frequently defended himself against accusations that he is antisemitic, claiming he has a right to urge fellow artists to boycott Israel. But last week the veteran rock star’s argued that Israeli treatment of the Palestinians can be compared to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. “The parallels with what went on in the 1930s in Germany are so crushingly obvious,” he said in an online interview with Counter Punch.

Already, Zionist and International media have started their War on Waters. In a New York Observer article titled “The Anti-Semitic Stench of Pink Floyd”, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said: “Mr Waters, the Nazis were a genocidal regime that murdered six million Jews. That you would have the audacity to compare Jews to monsters who murdered them shows you have no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul.

Waters defended his comments, telling the Observer: “I do not know Rabbi Boteach, and am not prepared to get into a slanging match with him.”

He added: “I have nothing against Jews or Israelis, and I am not antisemitic. I deplore the policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories and Gaza. They are immoral, inhuman and illegal. I will continue my non-violent protests as long as the government of Israel continues with these policies.”

The Jerusalem Post on the other hand ran an article titled: Roger Waters – Comfortably Dumb, in which it wrote, “The former Pink Floyd star put the proverbial foot in his mouth when he reached out to his fellow rockers describing Israel as an “apartheid” country that practices ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.”

Read the complete interview with Roger Waters: Roger Waters: Comparisons between Israel and Nazis ‘crushingly obvious’