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February 2, 2014 11:03 am
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Facebook Users Attack Roger Waters After Post Calling Out Scarlett Johansson

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avatar by Joshua Levitt

A poster criticizing Roger Waters and the Star of David-emblazoned pig used in his concerts. The poster was attached by a commenter to his open letter to Scarlett Johansson. Photo: Screenshot.

A poster criticizing Roger Waters and the Star of David-emblazoned pig used in his concerts. The poster was attached by a commenter to his open letter to Scarlett Johansson. Photo: Screenshot.

Facebook users on Sunday attacked Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd bassist and, for the past eight years, a vocal anti-Israel activist, for his latest open letter, published on the social media platform, this time, targeting Jewish actress Scarlett Johansson, who last week publicly ended her role as Global Ambassador for Oxfam because of “a fundamental difference of opinion” over the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Of the top 10 comments on Waters’s Saturday post, which has been “liked” over 3,000 times, the vast majority were defending Johansson and Israel.

The top post, with 1,057 “likes,” was from an Israeli radio station which wrote:  “Music is supposed to act as a bridge between people and cultures and not create a gap between them. Your attitude doesn’t help to break the wall, it only makes it higher.”

“The impression you make is that you’re not really interested in bringing peace and co-existence in the Middle East and that’s too bad because many of us here are… Maybe you’ve succeeded in convincing Pearl Jam not to come here, because you’re sort of a ‘father figure’ for them, but Neil Young is not a child and he will be here because he knows that music lovers are the same anywhere in the world.”

In his post, Waters also said he had written to Neil Young, who last month announced a tour date in Tel Aviv for July, to pressure him to stay home.

The second most popular comment, with 688 “likes,” was from Dror Nahum, who said, “Roger is not building bridges towards peace either. Only Hate.”

Nahum also quoted Neil Young, “Love and only love will break it down,” then said, “I’m so sad for you Roger.”

Nimrod Goldstein wrote, “I am an Israeli that loves your music and I tend to read your posts every time. I might not agree with them, but I respect your opinion. I don’t think you understand the situation in Israel, but I’ll leave that aside. You talk about Israel in 3 of your last 5 posts. Do you think that Israel is the source to all of the worlds problems? In the last 2 years, more than 100,000 people were killed in Syria. About 20,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in the last 3 years. I’m not sure that you’re aware to this, but in the last 70 years in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 15,000 people were killed on both sides.”

Kelly Levy said, “Roger, You are known for very selective ‘Human Rights activism’ (Syria, China and many other countries do not exist in your surreal map) – the true cause surfaces along with your hypocritical and uneducated stance.”

Levy then linked to a New York Daily News editorial published on Friday, headlined, “Scarlet Gives a Damn.”

The Daily News writes:

“Oxfam has forced Johansson to quit as one of its global ambassadors after she refused to adhere to the rabid, anti-Israel malice of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. In stepping down, she sets a powerful moral example…”

“Oxfam went off the dial because SodaStream happens to be an Israeli business — and, worse, because the company has a factory in an industrial park near a West Bank settlement. That makes SodaStream a pariah to Oxfam, which subscribes to the borderline anti-Semitic movement that is seeking to undermine the very existence of the Jewish state by calling for a trade boycott…”

“Blinded by the BDS crusade, Oxfam sacrificed an ally devoted to helping starving children to a litmus test that it applies to no other nation.”

“Companies do business in China, which imprisons dissidents by the thousands. Companies trade with Bangladesh, where workers in dangerous factories have died by the hundreds. Only Israel, which protects basic human and civil and economic rights, is forbidden territory.”

“With a strong, clear stand — calmly citing ‘fundamental difference of opinion’ — Johansson becomes the highest-profile celebrity to buck the load of BDS bull. Ever more power to her, and to those who may follow her example.”

On Saturday, Waters wrote, on Facebook: “Ah, Scarlett. I met Scarlett a year or so ago, I think it was at a Cream reunion concert at MSG [Madison Square Garden]. She was then, as I recall, fiercely anti Neocon, passionately disgusted by Blackwater (Dick Cheney’s private army in Iraq), you could have been forgiven for thinking that here was a young woman of strength and integrity who believed in truth, human rights, and the law and love. I confess I was somewhat smitten. There’s no fool like an old fool.”

“A few years down the line, Scarlett’s choice of Soda Stream over Oxfam is such an act of intellectual, political, and civil about face, that we, all those of us who care about the downtrodden, the oppressed, the occupied, the second class, will find it hard to rationalize,” Waters wrote.

Last year, after The Algemeiner reported that Waters, in his concerts, had been using an inflatable giant pig emblazoned with a Jewish Star of David, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called Waters an “open hater of Jews.” The rock star later penned an open letter calling for a cultural boycott of the Jewish state.

In response, Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli very publicly demanded that Waters, who was also using her images in a video montage in his concerts, remove them, immediately, saying that his cultural boycott should include her, too.

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