Roger Waters has come under fire for recent comments in which he described Jewish-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson as a “puppet master,” blamed Israel for the death of George Floyd, and called Zionism an “ugly stain” that “needs to be gently removed by us.”
Waters made the remarks in a new interview with the Middle East Media Research Institute. Discussing the relationship between the US and Israel, Waters singled out Adelson, the American business magnate and GOP political donor whose net worth is approaching $40 billion.
Adelson is “the puppet master pulling the strings of Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, and what’s his name… the Ambassador [to Israel]…,” Waters commented, before wrongly identifying Ambassador David Friedman as “Greenberg.”
“And Sheldon Adelson is a right-wing fascist racist bigot who doesn’t understand the first thing about the idea that human beings might have rights,” Waters continued. “Sheldon Adelson believes that only Jews – only Jewish people – are completely human. That they are attached in some way…””
“[He believes that] everybody else on Earth is there to serve them. Sheldon Adelson believe this. I’m not saying Jewish people believe this. I am saying that he does, and he is pulling the strings. So he has this strange – he thinks – Biblical construct in his head, that somehow everything will be all right in the world if there is a Greater Israel, which takes up the whole historic Palestine and the Kingdom of Jordan — puts it all together and calls it Israel and gives it only to the Chosen People… He is crazy. This is a crazy, crazy, crazy guy. Unfortunately. This crazy, crazy, crazy guy is also incredibly rich and has the tiny little – I nearly said the P-word that is used to describe the male genitals – prick of Donald Trump in his pocket.”
Later in the interview, Waters said Israel were indirectly to blame for the death of George Floyd, as the Israel Defense Forces invented the technique of kneeling on necks. “That is an Israeli technique, taught to the militarized police forces of the U.S.A. by Israeli experts, who the Americans have been flying over to the United States, to teach them how to murder the blacks because they have seen how efficient the Israelis have been at murdering Palestinians in the occupied territories by using those techniques,” Waters alleged. “And they are proud of it. They are proud of it. The Israelis are proud of it. They go: ‘Look how good we are at this, you can learn…'”
Waters concluded his comments by saying, “Zionism is an ugly stain, and it needs to be gently removed by us.”
It’s no secret that Roger Waters isn’t a fan of Israel. As a staunch supporter of Palestine, the Pink Floyd member previously described Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people as an “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing,” and has gone as far to liken Israel to Nazi Germany. But even by his own standards, his latest comments are rooted in anti-Semitic tropes and imagery.
