Friday, December 20, 2013

Famous rock musician speaks out on Israeli racism and violence

Rock star Roger Waters Speaks Out on Israeli Supremacists 

Roger Waters is the co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd, whose music album "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" topped the Billboard chart in the U.S. for fifteen weeks. "The Wall" ranks number three on the Recording Industry Association of America's list of the all-time Top 100 albums, with 23 million certified units sold in the U.S.

Here is an excerpt from an interview with Mr Waters conducted by CounterPunch magazine:

Waters: "I have nearly finished Max Blumenthal’s book Goliath: Life and Loathing in greater Israel. It’s a chilling read. It’s extremely well written in my view. He is a very good journalist and takes great pains to make sure that what he writes is correct. He also gives a voice to the other side. The voice, for instance, of the right wing rabbinate, which is so bizarre and hard to hear that you can hardly believe that it’s real. They believe some very weird stuff you know, they believe that everybody that is not a Jew is only on earth to serve them and they believe that the indigenous people of the region that they kicked off the land in 1948 and have continued to kick off the land ever since are sub-human. The parallels with what went on in the 30’s in Germany are so crushingly obvious...

"...where I live, in the USA...the propaganda machine that starts in Israeli schools and that continues through all the Netanyahu’s bluster is poured all over the United States, not just Fox but also CNN and in fact in all the mainstream media. It’s like a huge bucket of crap that they are pouring into the mouth of a gullible public in my view, when they say 'we are afraid of Iran, it is going to get nuclear weapons…'. It’s a diversionary tactic....no Israeli government has been serious about creating a Palestinian state since 1948. They’ve always had the Ben Gurion agenda of kicking all the Arabs out of the country and becoming greater Israel. They tell a lie as part of their propaganda machinery..This has been a very hard sell particularly where I live in the United States of America. The Jewish lobby is extraordinary powerful here and particularly in the industry that I work in, the music industry and in rock’n roll as they say. I promise you, naming no names, I’ve spoken to people who are terrified...if they stand shoulder to shoulder with me..."

Michael Hoffman’s Afterword

We are witnessing momentous change in the anti-Zionist Left which used to believe the legend that Israeli Zionism was a violation of the religion of Orthodox Judaism’s ethics. Now writers like Max Blumental and observers such as musician Roger Waters perceive that “right wing (i.e. Talmudic) rabbis" are behind the violence against the Palestinians and the land grab, justifying it on the basis of rabbinic texts such as the Mishnah Berurah, Shulchan Aruch, and of course the Gemara (Talmud).

To be fair, those who claim that Israeli injustice is also rooted in the Old Testament should read Prof. Alexander McCaul’s masterwork, The Talmud Tested: A Comparison of the Principles and Doctrines of Modern Judaism with the Religion of Moses and the Prophets and then see if they still think that Judaic nationalism and chauvinism are supported by the Bible.

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