"Peace on earth, we need it now."
Bono/GettyImages, Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
Roger Waters, who is considered one of the most prominent voices against Israel in the world, once again expresses his opinion regarding the war in Gaza.
This time in the crosshairs, again: the lead singer of the band U2, Bono, whose tribute to those murdered in the barbaric massacre at the Nova festival did not go down well with the lead singer of the former band Pink Floyd.
"Everyone who knows Bono should pick him up by the ankles and shake him. Until he stops being a huge piece of shit," Waters said in an interview with the Qatari news network Al Jazeera.
"We have to start telling these people, your opinion is so disgusting and so humiliating... to stick to the Zionist entity. What he did at 'Safra' in Las Vegas, singing about Magni David, was one of the most disgusting things I've seen in my life."
On October 9, at a U2 concert at their permanent venue in Las Vegas, the band's lead singer changed some of the lyrics of the song "Pride" as a tribute to those murdered at the Barai festival, as part of the surprise war from Gaza and the invasion of Israel.
"I want to sing for our brothers and sisters, who themselves sang at the 'Nova Sukkot' festival in Israel," said Bono at the beginning of the song.
"We sing for them, our people, people like us, music people, fun lovers, people who like to experiment, our own people. We sing for them."
And when he got to the third stanza in the song, he changed it and sang it like this (in a free translation): "Early in the morning, October 7 / The sun rises in the desert sky / From the stars of David, they took your lives / They will not be able to take your pride."
Afterwards, Bono told the crowd: "A festival of music and peace. Can you take in what these bastards did?".
Waters said his words to Al Jazeera even before another reference by U2 on stage to the events in Israel and Palestine.
In a new video uploaded by the band on Instagram, Bono said: "Seeing what the children of Abraham have been doing to each other around the world for a thousand years, and even today - it's confusing. Christians, Muslims, Jews. It's confusing. To see the suffering of the Palestinian children, after we've seen the suffering of the Israeli children, it is almost too much. I understand how ridiculous 'love your neighbor as yourself' sounds at the moment, but it is a divine commandment and not advice. Easy to say but almost impossible to carry out."
He then began to sing "Peace on Earth".
Next to the video on Instagram it is written: "Peace on earth, we need it now... They are calling names on the radio, the people we will never get to know... Gal and Ayat, Hind and Mila. Their lives are bigger than any big idea."
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Last November, less than a month after October 7, Waters justified the massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Envelope and made fun of the numbers of the murdered that Israel published.
In an interview with American journalist Glenn Greenwald, Waters said: "My first reaction to the attack was, 'Let's wait and see what happened. The second thought was, 'How the hell did the Israelis not know this was going to happen?! The Israeli army didn't hear the explosions at the bases when Hamas blew up the border fence?! There's something strange about that."
When asked by the interviewer if it is possible to justify the massacre by Hamas, Waters replied: "We don't know exactly what they did. Is it justified to resist the occupation? Yes, but it's the Geneva Convention. Morally they have to resist the occupation that started in 1967. This their duty."
Regarding the killing of the Israeli citizens, Waters said: "Of course I'm not in favor of it, but it was blown out of proportion, the Israelis made up stories about beheading babies."
His words led to a series of cancellations in the hotels he was supposed to stay in as part of his South American tour.
Hotels in Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia refused to accommodate him.
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Not impressed with Israeli cuisine.
Roger Waters/GettyImages, Jim Dyson/Getty Images
In addition, at the end of January, the record company BMG canceled the contract with Waters following his anti-Semitic statements.
According to a report in "Variety", the German company - considered one of the largest in the world - will say goodbye to Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd, due to his controversial statements towards Israel, Ukraine and the United States.
The company signed a deal with the musician in 2016 and was due to release a re-recorded version of Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon last year, but new CEO Thomas Kosfeld canceled the deal after taking up his new role on July 1, 2023. The album Will eventually be released via UK label Cooking Vinyl.
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