My Word: Troubled Roger Waters in stormy times - opinion

I have a question for readers outside of Israel: How many rockets have been launched on your country this week? Those of you who don’t live in Ukraine probably don’t need any fingers to count on, not even one sore thumb.

Here, “between the river and the sea,” as the Palestinian terrorist mantra goes, I’ve lost count. A married couple was killed when a rocket hit their car on Tuesday; there was a particularly heavy barrage of a few hundred from Hezbollah on northern Israel, reaching as far as Tiberias, on Sunday; and rockets were launched from both Lebanon and Gaza throughout the week. It is not normal to accept this as normal – not for those of us living here and not for those abroad telling us how we should be living here. 

The term “a proportional response” depends, to a great extent, on how far you live from the line of Iranian-sponsored rocket fire. Those who haven’t had to run to a shelter this week, this month, this year, or this millennium inevitably see things differently from those of us who subconsciously or openly always make sure to know where the nearest shelter or safe room is located.

Among those telling us what to do – and not politely – is former Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters. Waters is a fallen star, if ever there was one. In the interview he gave earlier this month to Piers Morgan, he turned anti-Israel tropes into verbal rockets. He would be pitiable if he weren’t so despicable.

Waters called the reports of mass rape by Hamas and the burning of babies “disgusting, filthy lies,” saying “there is no evidence,” even when Morgan tried to set him straight. He accused Israel of committing the attack on the Supernova partygoers, where hundreds were killed, and denied that Hamas is holding hostages – including baby Kfir Bibas – in Gaza.

Waters might want to ask himself how, in November, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad freed a small number of hostages – mainly women and children – in exchange for Palestinian prisoners if the Israeli captives weren’t there in the first place. There are several questions he could ask himself. In a particularly bizarre moment on Morgan’s YouTube show “Uncensored,” he turned aside and began telling himself out loud to “calm down, Roger. Don’t sink to his level.”

Even by Waters’ own low standard, accusing Israel of massacring 1,200 of its own people while declaring the mega-atrocity to be justified – “an absolute right to armed resistance” – was a new nadir. 

It didn’t take long for the memes and comments to start flooding social media, most of them based on well-known Pink Floyd songs from the era before he went over to “The Dark Side of the Moon.” There were several images of Hamas tunnels, captioned “Wishing you were here.” I couldn’t help noting, “So he thinks he can tell heaven from hell.” But he can’t. He’s clueless. His hatred for Israel is driving him insane.

Waters is washed out. Reality has unbalanced him. Apart from his ongoing hatred of Israel and automatic support for the Palestinians – no matter how many people they murder, torture, or abduct – Waters is still an enthusiastic supporter of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its unprovoked war on Ukraine. 

It’s just another example of the extraordinary contortions people are capable of making in order to poke Israel in the eye. Waters personifies the ugly face of antisemitism and the BDS movement, but he is sadly far from alone.

WORLD POLITICS seems to be going through a particularly volatile stage at the moment, with elections taking place in scores of countries. Jerusalem Post Diaspora Affairs reporter Michael Starr noted some of the fallout from the ballots this week: 

“Antisemites pointed to the Jewish faith of Victoria Starmer as evidence of a theory of broader conspiracy of Jews controlling the world through access to world leaders,” he wrote.

“Pro-Assad commentator Maram Susli, also known as Syrian Girl online, claimed that Starmer’s marriage was one of many that were part of ‘an Israel infiltration agenda’...”

“Britain’s new leader Keir Starmer is married to a Jewish woman. [US Vice President] Kamala Harris is married to a Jewish man. [US President Joe] Biden’s son is married to a Jewish woman. [Former US president] Donald Trump’s daughter is married to a Jewish man. [Former US secretary of state] Hillary Clinton’s daughter is married to a Jewish man. Just how many Jews are there in the world? I don’t believe when they say it’s been 15 million since the 1950s,” Susli told her over 400,000 X followers on Friday, Starr noted, in response to a Jerusalem Post article on the new prime minister’s wife.

In a similar vein, Starr reported, the Megatron social media account said that Israel was taking control of the UK and was seeking to put other European countries in its power.

“[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, who caused the war in Ukraine, is a Jew,” the X account with over 300,000 followers said on Saturday. “Directly or indirectly, a small apartheid state in the Middle East rules over a myriad of large and influential states. Not to mention the managements of the biggest companies in the world.”

It is extraordinary how the antisemites consider the Jews to be all-powerful, while the Jewish community worldwide collectively feels more threatened than at any time since the Holocaust. The enemies of the Jews also claim the Holocaust is a giant lie while, at the same time, they use Holocaust imagery to attack the Jewish state. 

Israelis are the new Nazis, according to those who espouse Holocaust denial. Likewise, Jews have been blamed for being both Communists and capitalists.

That the Palestinian cause appeared as a major plank of platforms of politicians who live thousands of miles away is disturbing. 

It is not the collapsing health systems, falling educational standards, or cost of living that became the priority for the pro-Palestinian crowd; rather, they focus on how Israel fights back against terrorists – many of them operating from the cover of UNRWA hospitals and schools. 

Well, given that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has denied Palestinians in the West Bank the chance to vote for their parliament for close to two decades, and Hamas, when elected in 2007 to rule Gaza (after Israel’s full withdrawal in 2005), began throwing supporters of the previous Fatah regime off the rooftops, perhaps elections in the West are the closest the Palestinians get to democracy.

As journalist Melanie Phillipps summed it up in a piece titled “All change” about the UK elections, “A deeply ominous development is the emergence of an Islamic sectarian vote, with four previously Labour-held seats lost to independent candidates whose pitch, in a British general election concerning British national interests, was about Gaza and ‘Palestine.’”

Meanwhile, in France, the second round of elections this week put the Left and far-left alliance ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, with Marine Le Pen’s right-wing party bringing up the rear. How the president is going to juggle this configuration that he himself brought about remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that French Jews are very concerned. And what starts with attacks on the Jews never ends there.

Around the world, the far-left has participated in pro-Palestinian rallies. A few years ago, a Swiss journalist described himself to me as “a former member of the Keffiyeh Generation”–  those who thought hijacker Leila Khaled was cool and arch-terrorist Carlos the Jackal worth idolizing like a Hollywood bank robber.

Age and experience had made him wiser – the age and experience of global jihad. But there is a new, and nastier, Keffiyeh Generation. Like Waters, they refuse to grow up and have lost the capacity to think logically.

The much-troubled Waters is a bad joke – that he was offered a prime spot to spout his conspiracy theories is part of the problem. 

But a bigger problem is that when he sings the praises of the Palestinian terrorists, there are only too many willing to join in the antisemitic chorus.