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Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters recently sat for an interview with Al Jazeera — a TV network widely regarded as a propaganda arm of radical Islam — and blasted U2 frontman Bono as a "s**t" for voicing "disgusting" pro-Israel views.
What's the background?
The day after terror group Hamas carried out a deadly surprise attack on a music festival in Israel on Oct. 7, U2 and Bono changed the lyrics of their anthemic song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and honored slaughtered attendees of the Supernova festival, calling them "Stars of David."
Before U2 kicked into "Pride," lead singer Bono spoke to the audience at the Sphere in Las Vegas: "In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence … But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us and [for] those beautiful kids at that music festival.”
The iconic anthem began with Bono singing the usual lyrics softly and slowly while the Edge strummed an acoustic guitar. After the tune picked up speed, Bono spoke again: “Sing for our brothers and sisters who they themselves were singing at the Supernova Sukkot festival in Israel. We sing for those. Our people, our kind of people, music people. Playful, experimental people. Our kind of people. We sing for them.”
At the most poignant moment of "Pride" — when it refers to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on "April 4" under a "Memphis sky" — the lyrics were altered to honor the massacre victims in Israel: “Early morning, October 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky. Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your pride.”
U2 Pride (In the Name of Love), Sphere Las Vegas 10/8/2023 Live Front Row youtu.be
What did Waters say?
Although Waters said during his interview with Al Jazeera that he respects the Jewish people and the Jewish religion, he ripped what he called the "Zionist entity" — and didn't hold back against Bono, either.
“Anybody who knows Bono should go and pick him up by his ankles and shake him until he stops being a ... s**t," Waters said, spelling out the swear word instead of speaking it.
He angrily added, “We have to start speaking to these people and saying, 'Your opinion is so disgusting and degrading when you stand up for the Zionist entity.' What [Bono] did in the Sphere in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, singing about the Stars of David, was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
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Anything else?
Waters has spoken against Israel for many years and has been accused of anti-Semitism along the way.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Waters during a November interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald said of the Hamas massacre, "My first response to the attack was 'let's wait and see what happened.' My second thought was 'how on earth did the Israelis not know this was going to happen?! Didn't the Israeli army hear the explosions at the bases when Hamas blew up the border fence? There's something strange about this."
Waters added that Hamas is "absolutely legally and morally obligated to resist the occupation" and that the terror group's attack was "made disproportionate by Israelis who invented stories of baby beheading," the Post said.
The New Musical Express said Waters has repeatedly denied anti-Semitism accusations and accused Israel of "abusing the term anti-Semitism to intimidate people like me into silence."
More from the NME:
He was recently the subject of a documentary, "The Dark Side Of Roger Waters," which was produced by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and collates various incidents of alleged anti-Semitism leveled against the musician.
Rogers spoke out against the documentary with a post to his official website, dismissing the project as “a flimsy, unapologetic piece of propaganda.” He later claimed that it “indiscriminately mixes things I’m alleged to have said or done at different times and in different contexts, in an effort to portray me as an anti-Semite, without any foundation in fact.”
The documentary highlights a controversial concert in Germany back in May 2023, which was criticized by the U.S. State Department who described it as “deeply offensive to Jewish people.” The gig saw him appear on stage wearing a black trench coat with a swastika-like emblem. At the time the musician defended the choice, claiming that the segment was a statement against fascism, injustice and bigotry and called criticism of it “disingenuous and politically motivated.”
In April, Waters won a legal battle to play a concert in Frankfurt after it was initially cancelled over claims of anti-Semitism, and last month it was reported that he had been dropped by his label BMG over his comments on Israel.
What's more, shock jock Howard Stern — who is Jewish — blasted Waters for sending a scolding letter to rocker Jon Bon Jovi for performing in Israel in 2015. Earlier that year, Waters wrote musician Alan Parsons — who engineered Pink Floyd's classic album "The Dark Side of the Moon" — asking him to reconsider plans to play in Israel. Parsons' response? “Music knows no borders, and neither do I.” Israeli supermodel Bar Rafieli in 2013 ripped Waters for boycotting her country.
U2 over the weekend kept up their activism; at one point, Bono lamented the continuing violence in the Middle East and said the biblical concept of loving our enemies and our neighbors is a "divine commandment" and "not advice."
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Anti-Semitic sparks fly at Sun Devil Student Union meeting
Anti-Semitism continues to grow at American universities.
A student government meeting at Arizona State University is the latest example of the growth — with pro-Israeli and Jewish students needing a police escort to leave.
One student who was heckling the pro-Israeli students was seen wearing a shirt that read “Phoenix Marxist School hosted by Socialist Revolution.”
“We will not be silenced,” the student shouted while another yelled, “Free Palestine!”
“I wonder if we gave him a student loan forgiveness or something,” Mark Levin says, adding, “Many of these little bastards are subsidized by you and me.”
In a livestream uploaded to one of the pro-Israeli student’s instagram pages, he shows the police officers escorting him back.
“It is unfortunate that we need to get a police escort back, as people were screaming such anti-Semitic things and throwing rocks on the window of the memorial union during the meeting,” he said.
Another student told the camera, “It’s terrible that in 2023 we have to be walked by police” and she feels “unsafe on this campus.”
The students claim that it “got violent” and that the pro-Palestinian students “were chucking rocks at the window and chanting and making death threats.”
Levin believes the Biden administration needs to stop saying it stands with Israel and actually do something about what’s happening in the country it's supposed to be protecting.
“They should be withholding federal grants and student loan monies and withdraw other monies from these universities that are breeding these terrorist-thinking Islamists and Marxists. They should be going through the student visa lists right now as I speak,” Levin says.
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