Roger Waters is unusual to say the least: he is a well-known artist who has spent every ounce of his social and personal capital on an issue that could only hurt his career, Palestinian freedom. He has an excellent piece up at Huffpo, “How Western Governments Have Failed Palestinian Children”:
Over 500 little ones were brutally slain by the Israel Defense Forces this summer during its 50-day assault on the tiny coastal strip of territory that is Gaza. The decades of relentless injustice faced by Palestinian children and their families living under the terror of Israeli occupation and siege are a stain, not just on the Israeli government, but also on our collective humanity.
Where governments and the security council of the United Nations have failed to address Israel’s occupation and subjugation of Palestinians, people around the world are increasingly stepping up to the plate. I have recently returned from a trip to Brussels where I served as a juror on the non-judicial Russell Tribunal on Palestine…
The piece ends with joy/pride in the British Parliament’s vote to recognize a Palestinian state. And this hope:
Based on the success of US activists with BDS and Open Hillel, I am convinced that the American people will become so aware of the situation they will push their members of Congress to take a principled stand for freedom and equal rights for the Palestinian people. It’s only a matter of time. Our role is to hasten that day.
Waters’s article elicited this bit of venom from a New Jersey rabbi for a progressive synagogue:
If I never hear another Pink Floyd song again, it will be too soon…. Roger should have stopped doing drugs a… http://t.co/R8DL7D263a
— Rabbi Avi Friedman (@avfriedman) October 15, 2014
The rabbi is Rabbi of Congregation Ohr Shalom in New Jersey: a “progressive, egalitarian” Conservative congregation.
(Roger Waters and his mates have stated that Pink Floyd was not a druggy band, though the late Syd Barrett was famous for psychedelic drug use. This discussion forum suggests that other band members did drugs. By the way, so did I and a lot of other folks I know.)
Interesting that the ‘progressive, egalitarian’ Rabbi thinks that one has to be ‘on drugs’ to care about the deliberate murder of hundreds of children and others.
Says much about him.
None of it’s good.
They simply cannot handle criticism and the truth. These are supposed to be human beings doing the work of their God, and yet that compassion is lost when it comes to Palestinian civilians especially little children. Not a word of regret that these little kids were slaughtered, or that the dark side bombed 7 UN shelter giving refuge to unarmed civilians. They simply show their meanness by attacking ALL who dare criticize their motherland. No one is spared.
Perhaps it might serve them well to stop making personal attacks on those who bring focus on Israel’s crime, and focus on their mentally sick brothers, who need their help:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/rabbi-charged-with-voyeurism-hid-camera-in-clock-radio-in-ritual-bath-police-report-says/2014/10/15/8b43a5d2-547e-11e4-ba4b-f6333e2c0453_story.html
If the message hurts, shoot the messenger. Did Israelis killed 500 children (recently!), and did Waters say so publicly? Then say he is/was/associated with druggies (or criminals or wife beaters of republicans or democrats — whatever will move your audience). And ignore what he says.
Partial disclosure: I never “did drugs” (though I did/do ingest coffee, chocolate, alcohol, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and several more).
I’d rather do drugs than imbibe the blatant supremacist ideology that is Zionism, which has led the state of Israel to commit monstrous crimes against humanity, all the while hiding under the mantle of Judaism and shielding any criticism of itself by using the holocaust of the innocent jews of Europe and that old worn out shield of antisemitism.
The Rabbi is an extremist who supports the theft of someone else’s property.
A thief in religious garb.
Who gives a fiddlers fart what this zionist wacko thinks.