Roger Waters on touring in Israel and the West Bank in 2006

That old story is 2005, I think.  I was on tour in Europe...  And suddenly in the middle of the tour in Europe my agent calls me and he says, "Look, there's a space of four days here.  We could stick a gig in."  Again, "Whatever."  "Yeah, Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv."  "Okay, whatever."  So they put Hayarkon Park into my itinerary and I immediately started getting emails.  The first ones, interestingly, were from North Africa from Moroccans and Algerians.  And I'm going, "What?"  And then I started getting some from the occupied territories because the BDS movement had just started.  Literally, that was the year.  And I got an email from Omar Barghouti who I've since got to know very well over the years.  And he said, "Please don't" and explained everything.

So, in fact, the show was sold out and I cancelled that show, having heard that Hayarkan Park is built on Palestinians' grave and blood.  But I came to some sort of internal compromise because I knew very little about what was going on in Palestine.  And I moved the gig to an agricultural community where they grow chickpeas.  It's a sort of "peace village."  It has two names.  It's called, I think, Wahat al Salam in Arabic.  I may be wrong.  And in Hebrew, it's Neve Shalom.  And it's sort of half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  And what's good about it is... it's Jews and Muslims and Arabs and Druze and Christians and Agnostics, and they all live together in this community growing chickpeas mainly.  And all their children go to school together and they teach, kind of, love and peace.

So we did a gig there.  We had 60,000 people came.  I think at the time it was the biggest gig there had ever been in Israel.  And it was a huge success and they were all, "Pink Floyd, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" until the very end when I got up on my hind legs and said, "Now then, you are the generation of young Israelis who must make peace with your neighbors and blah, blah."  And they went from [Waters has his hands up to show cheering] "Roger, Roger, Roger!" to [Waters brings his down to show dead silence].  It was uncanny.  They went from that [hand up] to "What the fuck is he talking about?  We're not going to make peace with anybody.  Are you crazy?  They're animals."  I mean they didn't say all of that, but they went very, very quiet.  [Editor's note: Did Waters exaggerate this story?  See here.]

Anyway, we left and I went back the next year and went on an extended tour with a lovely lady called Allegra Pacheco... and we went all over the West Bank.  And it was chilling beyond anything I could ever have imagined.  To see back then in 2006, what was going on and the absolute disdain and disgust with which we, me, with a British passport in an UNWRA vehicle, was treated by all the young Israeli border guards and people.  I remember thinking at the time, if they're like that to me, what must they be like to the Palestinians? 

~ Roger Waters, TRT World interview, 0:55 mark, December 5, 2023