Anti‐Israel Firebrand Roger Waters Claims He Has ‘Never Spoken a Single Antisemitic Word’
by Shiryn Ghermezian
Ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters claimed in a recent interview with Al Jazeera that he was not antisemitic, despite his vehement activism against the Jewish state.
“Quite clearly, I’m not antisemitic,” Waters ‐‐ a vocal BDS supporter ‐‐ asserted in a video interview published on Saturday. “I’ve never done or spoken a single antisemitic word or act in my entire life, or had an antisemitic thought in my head in my entire life.”
Later in the interview, Waters slammed Israel for what he called a “70-year-old occupation of Palestine.”
The British musician also accused Israel of practicing “apartheid,” and said it committed “vile war crimes every single day against the people of Palestine.”
While discussing UK politics, he denied that former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had promoted antisemitism, charging that such accusations were a “conspiracy” started by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry.
“[Israel] used the antisemitic smear campaign to destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s chances” of electoral success, he stated, before criticizing Labour for not dismissing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
In the past, Waters has publicly condemned other artists, such as Madonna, for performing in Israel.
A concert he held in 2013 featured an inflatable pig marked with a Star of David, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has blasted Waters for “using imagery long associated with stereotypes about Jews and money.”
Watch Waters’ Al Jazeera interview below: