Israel Matzav

Cost-free protest: Roger Waters joins the BDS'ers

Roger Waters has joined the BDS'ers by calling for a boycott of Israel until it commits suicide.

In a letter posted on the website of the Alternative information Center, Waters said he would continue to wage a boycott campaign against Israel until it ends its occupation of the West Bank and dismantles the security fence, grants full equality to Arab citizens of Israel and allows all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel.

Waters last visited here in 2006.

After visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem and viewing the security fence -- on which he spray-painted "we don't need no thought control," a lyric from the Pink Floyd song "Another Brick in the Wall" -- he canceled his concert at a sports stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom, a village in which Jews and Arabs live together in a planned community.

But Waters' grasp of the issues is tenuous at best.

I was especially impressed by the fact that he returns again and again to the wall Israel has built (well, that would make sense, given Water's history of walls), without ever reflecting on the fact that the wall is actually an expression of ending the occupation: the sense of having a border is that the Palestinians will end up on one side, and the Israelis on the other, and there will be a border separating them. The wall, and partition, also contradict the right of return he supports, but no matter. The important thing is that a man with no grasp of the reality feels it's an honorable thing to make idiotic and counter-factual statements about the Jewish state, and he'll be applauded for doing so by large numbers of other malicious fools. That's the important heart of the matter.

Unfortunately, the President of the United States doesn't have any better grasp of the issues than does Roger Waters. Read the whole thing.

I can't help but wonder if Waters has any grasp of the issues. For a man who claims not to be an anti-Semite (okay, that claim is questionable), one has to wonder whether Waters is aware of the consequences Israelis would face if we were foolish enough to listen to him.

By the way, Waters visited Israel in 2009, although JTA is correct in pointing out that the last time he played a concert here was 2006.

Labels: BDS, right of return, Roger Waters, security fence

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:18 PM