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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Professor under fire for comparing Israelis to Nazis

"You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza," Foxman said. "But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism." -Abe Foxman, ADL Thought Cop

Professor's comparison of Israelis to Nazis stirs furor

The UC Santa Barbara sociologist, who is Jewish, sent images from the Holocaust and from Israel's Gaza offensive to students in his class. He has drawn denunciation and support.

By Duke Helfand

Los Angeles Times | April 30, 2009

Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor's decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel's recent Gaza offensive.

The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him.

The uproar began in January when Robinson sent his message -- titled "parallel images of Nazis and Israelis" -- to the 80 students in his sociology of globalization class.

The e-mail contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children, juxtaposed with nearly identical images from the Gaza Strip. It also included an article critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and a note from Robinson.

"Gaza is Israel's Warsaw -- a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians," the professor wrote. "We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide."

Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying they felt intimidated by the professor's message. They contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which advised them to file formal complaints with the university.

In their letters, senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman accused Robinson of violating the campus' faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course.

"I was shocked," said Joseph, 22. "He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech, but he doesn't have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong."

Robinson, 50, who is Jewish, called the accusations and the campus investigation an attack on academic freedom. He said his former students, the Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League had all confused his criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.

"That's like saying if I condemn the U.S. government for the invasion of Iraq, I'm anti-American," he said. "It's the most absurd, baseless argument."

Robinson said he regularly sends his students voluntary reading material about current events for the global affairs course, and that no one raised questions when he subsequently discussed his e-mail.

"The whole nature of academic freedom is to introduce students to controversial material, to provoke students to think and make students uncomfortable," said Robinson, a UC Santa Barbara professor for nine years.

As the dispute over his e-mail plays out, UC Santa Barbara has become the most recent U.S. university to confront campus unrest over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In recent years, Jewish and Muslim groups have quarreled repeatedly at UC Irvine about the Holocaust and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Professors and students at Columbia University have also argued over issues of intimidation and academic freedom amid debates on the Mideast.

In Robinson's case, reaction has been strong -- on both sides. Shortly after hearing from the two students in January, the Wiesenthal Center produced a YouTube video titled "Jewish Students Under Siege from Professor at UC Santa Barbara." The clip shows one of Robinson's former students, her face obscured to protect her identity, reading from his e-mail.

The head of the ADL's Santa Barbara region sent Robinson a letter in February calling on him to repudiate his statements about Israel. Last month, the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, in a meeting with faculty members at the campus, urged the university to conduct an investigation into Robinson. He was told that an inquiry was already underway.

"You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza," Foxman said. "But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism."

Robinson's supporters say the professor is being maligned for exercising his right to challenge his students to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Students on campus have formed a group, the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, which is chronicling the saga on its website. Letters of support also have arrived from academics across the country, including one from California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which says it represents 100 professors at 20 college campuses. The group argues that the allegations have been raised against Robinson to "silence criticism of Israeli policies and practices."

Some UC Santa Barbara faculty members also are speaking up for Robinson. History professor Harold Marcuse, who attended the March meeting with the ADL's Foxman, said the pictures e-mailed by Robinson were "well within the bounds of appropriateness on campus. It's something I could have used in a course."

Marcuse, who is Jewish and teaches about the Holocaust in his world history and German history classes, said he would not have injected his own views into such a message to students, but added: "I don't think Bill Robinson's e-mail is anti-Semitic in any way. I think criticism of Israel is OK."

One UC Santa Barbara official has already looked into the allegations against Robinson, and a faculty committee is being formed to decide whether to forward the case to UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang. A university spokesman declined to comment on the case.

Robinson has hired an attorney, and the student committee supporting him has scheduled a May 14 campus forum on the matter. Joseph and Hausman, the students who filed the original complaints, said they plan to attend. So do Hausman's parents from Los Angeles and Rabbi Aron Hier, director of campus outreach for the Wiesenthal Center.

"I just want to bring awareness," said Hausman, 20. "I want people to know that educators shouldn't be sending out something that is so disturbing."

End quote

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Read the record of rabbinic censorship in

Judaism Discovered by Michael Hoffman

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Israelis Threaten to Holocaust Gaza

Israel Warns Gaza Of "Shoah"

By REUTERS | Filed at 5:33 p.m. ET | February 29, 2008

GAZA (Reuters) - A year-old Palestinian girl and a senior Hamas bombmaker were killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday as Israel pressed home air strikes after a senior official warned Gazans they risked a "shoah" if rocket fire did not stop.

With the Palestinian death toll at 35 in three days, aides insisted the deputy defense minister used the Hebrew word not in its common meaning of holocaust but only as a term for disaster.

But the strength of his language reflected mounting anger after an Israeli was killed by a rocket on Wednesday and the government debated whether to mount a major ground offensive.

Hamas, which organized rallies in Gaza, held the comment up as proof their enemies were the "new Nazis."

Friday saw fewer air strikes. One, which the army said had targeted a rocket squad, killed Eyad al-Ashram. Hamas said he was one of the Islamist group's senior munitions experts.

Doctors said one-year-old Malak al-Kafarna died in hospital from a shrapnel wound to the head after a missile exploded near her home, wounding four other civilians. Hamas officials said it was an Israeli surface-to-surface missile. Residents said some rockets fired by militants also fell short, landing inside Gaza.

Political sources said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was wary of launching a major ground offensive and Israeli public radio stations quoted security sources saying that, while plans for an assault were being prepared, such an invasion was not imminent.

The United States, whose Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due next week to visit Olmert and Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank, urged Israel to "consider the consequences" of its action. Bloodshed could derail Washington's hopes of a peace deal this year before President George W. Bush steps down.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has shared Israel's hostility to Hamas since they routed his forces in Gaza in June, called Israeli threats "dangerous." Even Palestinians who want to see Hamas defeated are outraged that at least 16 civilians, including children as young as 6 months, were among the 35 dead.

"A BIGGER "SHOAH

Israel's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio: "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger 'shoah' because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

The word "shoah" is rarely used in Israel beyond discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews but government spokesmen said Vilnai had employed the word only to mean "disaster."

Israeli leaders said rockets from the blockaded territory may leave them no choice but to launch a broader offensive into the crowded coastal strip, which is home to 1.5 million people and which Israel occupied for 38 years until 2005.

Though rocket fire has long disrupted life in small Israeli border towns since then, the killing of an Israeli on Wednesday, the first such death since May, has increased public pressure on Olmert's already unpopular coalition government to act.

Hamas has also raised the stakes by firing Soviet-designed Katyusha missiles, more powerful and accurate than improvised Gazan Qassams, to strike the much larger city of Ashkelon.

Visiting there, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said an Israeli response was "required" and that "Hamas bears responsibility for this deterioration and it will also bear the results."

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was Abbas's prime minister until June, told supporters: "This is a proof of Israel's pre-planned aggressive intentions against our people. "They want the world to condemn what they call the Holocaust and now they are threatening our people with a holocaust."

According to Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Barak has sought to prepare the way for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including Rice. "Israel is not keen on and rushing for an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice," Barak told them, Yedioth said.

However, chastened by his 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Olmert is wary of an operation that would incur more casualties when Israel is reluctant to re-occupy Gaza long-term.

Rice has voiced concern for Palestinian civilian deaths but stopped short of calling for Israeli restraint. Officials say she will make clear support for Israel's right to defend itself.

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