Kevin Duffy responds to Roger Waters interview about Israel-Palestine conflict

You had me hanging on every word (in agreement) until you got to the word "profit."  This is a strange criticism coming from a man who has profited handsomely from the free market.  What were the means to those millions you and your band mates earned in profit?  It wasn't through violence.  You didn't screw anybody.  In fact, you served millions of consumers.  Your fans (myself included) were happy to hand over a few of their hard earned dollars for a record album or concert ticket.  In return we were not only treated to incredible music, but lyrics that touched deep emotions and got us to think critically.  Pink Floyd became part of the soundtrack and conscience of our lives.  What is that worth?  There's a lesson here: Trade is not exploitation, it is win-win. 

Trade is also the key to the Israelis and Palestinians ending their century long blood feud.  Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2006, cutting off the mutually beneficial economic bonds that tie people together, especially people who hate each other.  That blockade is nothing more than an act of war, hitting civilians the hardest.  The West Bank Palestinians, led by Omar Barghouti, responded with their own boycotts and sanctions (the BDS movement). While some of their efforts are targeted and justified (e.g., against Boeing selling weapons to the Israelis), they run the risk of declaring economic war on Israeli civilians AS WELL AS their own people.

What is the result of these trade wars?  Those in power - Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, the Netanyahu administration - get stronger as their people suffer under crushing sanctions which create the ideal external enemy.  Foreign aid only makes matters worse, being syphoned off by the political class and further subverting the free market. 

There is an ironclad law of economics: Where goods are not allowed to cross borders, armies will.  Gaza and the West Bank are just the latest in a long, tragic list of examples.

~ Kevin Duffy, reply to TRT World interview of Roger Waters, December 9, 2023

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

Roger Waters on the Israel lobby's attempt to cancel him in Chile

My heart and my brain are so full of all the political as well as humanitarian machinations of the Gaza question and the Palestine question right now that I find it difficult to escape from it.  And all the bullshit that I've been experiencing in South America with them trying to - 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.  They were in Buenos Aires as well.  And yet the Israeli lobby still tried to get my shows in Buenos Aires cancelled on the grounds that I'm an anti-Semite, which I'm not, obviously.  It's such arrogant nonsense, and yet they make up stories and then amplify them 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, and Goering.  This is exactly what they said and what they absolutely did.  They said "we have to lie and lie and lie and the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe."  That's what these stupid assholes have been doing against me...  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 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 Jesus.  And they believe this bullshit!  And they're prepared to sacrifice this entire beautiful planet that we live on...  They're sacrificing the whole thing.  They should believe what they want, but they should not hold positions of political power because this is crazy.

~ Roger Waters, 18:40 mark, December 5, 2023

Roger Waters on first playing The Dark Side of the Moon for his wife

When the record was finished I took a reel-to-reel copy home with me and I remember playing it for my wife then, and I remember her bursting into tears when it was finished.  And I thought, "This has obviously struck a chord somewhere," and I was kinda pleased by that.  You know when you've done something, certainly if you create a piece of music, you then hear it with fresh ears when you play it for somebody else.  And at that point I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a pretty complete piece of work," and I had every confidence that people would respond to it.

~ Roger Waters, Pink Floyd bassist, 2006 interview