People slammed Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters as an anti-Semite long before the Oct. 7 attacks triggered a wave of Jewish hate across the globe.
Waters, the band’s co-founder and a still-active rocker at 80, has walked a razor-thin line over the years between criticizing Israel and attacking the people who call the nation home.
He may have crossed said line even for his staunchest defenders.
Waters recently spoke out against fellow rock icon Bono of U2 fame. The Irish superstar reacted swiftly to the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas which killed 1,200 people and kidnapped hundreds more.
Rape. Torture. Beheadings.
The news accounts proved so grisly Bono addressed them from, where else, a concert stage mere hours after the attacks.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation
He paid particular attention to Hamas’ assault on a music festival dedicated to peace by tweaking the band’s ‘80s smash, “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
From: “Early morning, April four / Shots ring out in the Memphis sky / Free at last, they took your life / they could not take your pride.”
To: “Early morning, October 7th / As the sun is rising in the desert sky / Stars of David, they took your life / But they could not take your pride.”
In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence…But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us…and those beautiful kids at that music festival.
The band shared the concert clip via its social media accounts. How could anyone object to U2’s tribute, which wasn’t aggressive, only heartfelt? What possible argument could be lobbied against it? Shouldn’t musicians be particularly outraged by a terrorist attack on a concert?
Tell that to Waters.
He spat out his disgust for what Bono said on Al Jazeera TV:
Anybody who knows Bono should go and pick him up by his ankles and shake him until he stops being a [giant] s*** … we have to start speaking to these people and saying, ‘Your opinion is so disgusting and degrading, when you stand up for the Zionist entity…’
What he did in the Sphere in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, singing about the Stars of David, was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Remember, Waters is an 80-year-old man.
If that rhetoric came as an isolated outburst some may be willing to forgive if not forget. Except it’s part of a pattern, one that leaves less and less doubt of Waters’ intentions.
Jim Dyson/Getty Images
We saw something similar late last year when he sat down for an interview with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald roughly a month after Hamas’ savagery.
Let’s wait and see what happened, was my first reaction [to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks]. My second reaction was — how the hell did the Israelis not know this was going to happen? There’s something very fishy about that.
There’s no proof the Israeli government knew such an attack was coming. It’s hard to imagine any government would allow that kind of atrocity to be perpetuated on its people for political purposes.
Greenwald pressed Waters on whether he thought the Oct. 7 attacks were “justified.”
We don’t know what they did do. But was it justified for them to resist the occupation? Yeah.
We knew fairly quickly what Hamas did. The terrorists filmed much of their barbaric acts on GoPro-style cameras, smartphones, and other devices, eager for the world to witness their barbarism. Journalists and Hollywood dwellers got to see a montage of the clips shortly after Oct. 7.
Canadian journalist Matt Gurney called the footage “just about the worst thing I have ever seen.”
Waters also downplayed the fact that Israeli citizens were targeted in the melee.
The thing was thrown out of all proportion by the Israelis making up stories about beheading babies.
No one has credibly disputed that 1,200 people that day, or that the terrorist group kidnapped men, women, senior citizens and even toddlers following the attacks.
Waters’ ex-bandmate David Gilmour made up his mind a while ago on whether Waters harbors hate against Jewish people. Last year, Gilmour used his X account to promote the documentary “The Dark Side of Roger Waters,” a film accusing the singer of anti-Jewish sentiments.
The film, from the Campaign Against Antisemitism, featured first-person accounts by Jewish musicians who worked with Waters – Norbert Stachel and Bob Ezrin – who claimed they heard him utter anti-Semitic comments.
Gilmour’s wife, Polly Samson, added fuel to the fire by saying Waters was “antisemitic to [his] rotten core.”
All of this comes after Waters’ infamous stage antics where he performed under an inflatable pig emblazoned with the Star of David and strode across the stage wearing a Nazi-like uniform. The latter, he said, was his way of opposing fascism and bigotry.
The most intriguing part of it all? We’ve seen actors face professional blowback recently for sharing anti-Israeli comments, including Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon. Cancel Culture also erased Roseanne Barr’s career for a horrid Tweet.
Waters, on the other hand, has endured few repercussions for his chronic words and actions.
City Council members in Frankfurt, Germany, briefly stopped a planned May 2023 concert by the rocker, declaring that Waters “repeatedly called for a cultural boycott of Israel and drew comparisons to the apartheid regime in South Africa and put pressure on artists to cancel events in Israel.”
A court overruled the decision.
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Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.