Roger Waters Goes Viral for Israel-Gaza Comments

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has claimed Israeli lobbyists tried to cancel his shows in South America.

Waters, 80, who has long been a vocal supporter of Palestinians and critic of the Israeli government, is currently on the South American leg of his "This Is Not a Drill" world tour.

However, in an interview with Turkish media outlet TRT World, he said lobbyists had attempted to "co-opt all the hotels" in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay, in order to make it harder for him to perform there.

Newsweek has contacted Waters' representatives by email for comment.

"They just tried to cancel my show...here in Santiago, in Chile, where I know I'm enormously popular, not just because the shows are sold out," he said.

As a result, the Latin American Confederation of Workers found rooms for Waters and his crew, which it said it did in solidarity of the "defense of human rights," according to Argentinian news site, Pagina 12.

Waters also addressed the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza where the death toll from Israeli air strikes and a military ground campaign has risen to 16,200, per the Associated Press.

Israel began its retaliatory campaign on Gaza after the military arm of Hamas launched an attack on October 7. Israel's death toll peaked at 1,200, per AP, and Hamas kidnapped more than 200 people, but has since released some hostages.

"My heart and my brain are so full of all the political as well as humanitarian machinations of the Gaza question, on the Palestine question right now that I find it difficult to escape from it and all the bull**** that I'm experiencing in South America with them trying to cancel my show," Waters said.

"We know exactly what they [Israelis] are like to the Palestinians, because they are, as we speak, committing genocide in Gaza."

The Pink Floyd co-founder claimed lobbyists tried to organize an "extraordinary boycott based on malicious lies," and denied their claims he was antisemitic, saying it was "nonsense." He went on to compare his critics to the notorious chief propagandist of the Nazi regime, Joseph Goebbels.

"They still make up stories and then amplify and then print them again and again and again and again and again and again. And I know we're not allowed to say it, but it's right out of Goebbels' playbook—the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe that's what these stupid a**holes have been doing against me," Waters said.

The rocker also explained he first became a supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement after being asked to cancel a planned show in Israel. The BDS movement is a Palestinian-led movement that aims to deter Israel's policies towards Palestinians through actions such as government sanctions and boycotts of Israeli companies.

Waters said of people in the U.S. supporting Israel: "These are very, very dim people and they are completely attached to the idea of the illegal settler colonialism of the Zionist movement in Palestine and the other crazy people who've attached themselves to this are Christian evangelicals in the United States who support Israel like [Joe] Biden and why?

"Because they want to see the Jews all burn in hell when Jesus comes down in the second coming and they all go to heaven holding hands with and they believe this bulls***. And I know they're prepared to sacrifice this entire beautiful planet that we live on. They should believe what they want, but they should not hold positions of political power because this is crazy," Waters said.

Filmmaker Vin Arfuso, who worked with Waters on a documentary set in Palestine called Walled Off, told Newsweek that supporting Palestinians was not inherently antisemitic.

"The most important being that I want people (Americans mostly) to understand the plight of the Palestinians, to understand what it means to live under military occupation, to understand the concept of ethnic cleansing, the meaning of apartheid—where it applies and where it doesn't with regard to Israel, and so on," Arfuso said.

"For too long the slogan 'Free Palestine' has been conflated with accusations of antisemitism and other ill-intentions when in reality it's a call for self-determination and independence."

However, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) previously told Newsweek it had gathered evidence of examples of Waters making antisemitic comments, which were presented in the documentary The Dark Side of Roger Waters.

"Roger Waters has repeatedly used his enormous platform to bait Jews, but he always claims that he is not antisemitic. We believed that there was further evidence out there to the contrary, and the release of The Dark Side of Roger Waters now puts the evidence we obtained in the hands of the public," Gideon Falter, chief executive of CAA told Newsweek in September.

Reaction to Waters' TRT World interview was mixed.

"Roger Waters is antisemitic. Producer Bob Ezrin confirms this. A new documentary, The Dark Side of Roger Waters, includes claims from Ezrin and former Waters saxophonist Norbert Stachel. Both are Jewish, & both claim he made offensive remarks about Jewish people to them," wrote one person on X, formerly Twitter.

Another added: "You keep ignoring the hostages."

But others praised Waters' commitment to Palestinian people.

"A lot of ppl forget that BDS has had a huge role in many musicians refusing to play in Israel. Roger Waters has done a great job in persuading many colleagues to divest," wrote one person.

And a second commented: "Roger Waters is now my new hero. Listen to him speak about the Zionist project and how it's utterly failed."