Last night, the first night of the tour, Roger Waters chose to add a Star of David to a plethora of fascist symbols on the inflatable pig that has been part of his show for years. Full background below but here’s the explanation of this in the words of Waters’ Director of Media Relations:
“For this most recent tour, the pig appears to have numerous symbols, including a hammer, dollar signs, and sickle and a small Star of David“
Well Mr Roger Waters: size doesn’t matter. We don’t care that it was “small”.
The Star of David is first and foremost the symbol of Jews and Judaism. It was such long before the re-establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. So you can’t claim it’s some kind of Zionist symbol. It is the symbol, naturally, chosen by Hitler to mark Jews out for death. It appears spread across thousands of years of archeology and most especially buried in OUR land of Israel).
It is Jewish. It is not uniquely Zionist. Zionism is the expression of Jews wishing to live, unmolested and safe in their own ancient home. Jews are the only living nation who can claim unbroken lineage in Israel.
When you uniquely put a Star of David on you floating, fascist pig you chose to say that only Jews in the world today run a fascist country.
There is, in fact, only one widespread religious and political system in the world today that runs numerous fascist dictatorship and theocracies where people are routinely slaughtered by their “governments”.
It is Islam, not Judaism.
In fact, non Islamic dictatorship are rare (yes, North Korea, Cuba and a few others spring to mind).
So, Mr Waters, as we pass 100,000 slaughtered in Syria and ongoing, widespread, slaughter of Muslims, by Muslims in the name of Allah, why did you choose only a Jewish symbol for your pig?
You have used the Islamic Crescent in the past we note, but perhaps displaying it on a pig during Ramadan is a bit too much for you at this time? Scared to stand up to the real fascists are you?
You didn’t even use the Israeli flag: not only do you openly declare your hatred for Jews, you’re not even clever enough to cloak it in so-called “Anti-Zionism”!
We add this latest use of the Jewish Star of David to your repeated statements uniquely and falsely condemning Israel for apartheid (I’ve not heard you talk much about Saudi Arabia or any other Muslim country). You uniquely call for the Jewish state to tear down a barrier that has saved many lives defending us from murderous savages while ignoring all other security barriers in the world. You single out only the Jewish state out for “occupying” its own land while saying nothing of Turkish Cyprus, the lack of a Kurdish state, Chinese occupation of Tibet and numerous other territorial disputes. In this and so many ways you single only Jews and their Jewish state out for criticism.
This is the very basis of Jew hatred. You have it, you don’t think its a problem, and you’re happy to infuse this hatred of Jews into everything you do and pass it on to as many as you can. You, sir, are a bad case of herpes we just can’t shake off.
Full Background:
Israellycool first covered this when we were alerted that El Al, Israel’s national airline, was offering packages of flights and concert tickets for Roger Waters’ forthcoming show in Budapest. After we drew attention to this, along with Roger Waters particularly nasty history of false accusations against Israel: El Al quickly removed the offer from sale.
Well his tour opened last week in Belgium and one of the concert goers, Alon Onfus Asif, an Israeli, was a little surprised by what he saw. He told YNet and reported in Algemeiner:
“I came to the concert because I really like his music, without any connection to his political stance toward Israel,” Alon Onfus Asif, an Israeli living in Belgium told Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. “And I had a lot of fun, until I noticed the Star of David, on the inflatable pig. That was the only religious-national symbol which appeared among other symbols for fascism, dictatorships and oppression of people. Waters crossed the line and gave expression to an anti-Semitic message, beyond all his messages of anti-militancy.”
The Anti Defamation League and various others have jumped on this quickly and condemned it and Roger Waters publicity machine has trotted out an explanation:
“This is the same thing he’s been doing for years,” said Todd Gutnick, Director of Media Relations. “We believe there’s no anti-Semitic intent here in the use of the Star of David symbol.”
“The song is ‘Run Like Hell’ from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall.’ The song is written from the point of view of the anti-hero, ‘Pink,’ during a hallucination in which he becomes a fascist dictator and turns a concert audience into an angry mob. True to form, Waters appears dressed for the part. It is a concert tradition going back years that during this song an inflatable pig is released into the air. For this most recent tour, the pig appears to have numerous symbols, including a hammer, dollar signs, and sickle and a small Star of David,” Gutnick explained.
“In the film version of “The Wall,” the mob raids and destroys the homes of Black and Jewish people, so the use of the Jewish and other symbols on the pig is consistent with the lyrics of the song,” he concluded.
