The Dark Side of Waters

I loved and still love Roger Waters’ brilliant music. It was difficult not to as a student in the seventies!

So, without denying the impact of Pink Floyd on Rock culture and society, today, when I hear Water’s magnum opus, “The Wall”, I think he may be “off the wall”.

Or worse!

While the message in Pink Floyd’s lyrics were at times subliminal, the messages today from the band’s co-founder and chief song-writer is clear – to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel. It is reminiscent of another of his concept albums – ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’. There is something “dark” about Waters today the way he obsessively supports BDS – whose aim is the destruction of the only Jewish state. Is this what he supports despite his protestations that he is not an anti-Semite?

Cicero

What’s with Waters?

Roger Waters

This “Dark Side”, evident in influential figures throughout history, has a name: it’s called anti-Semitism.

Let us reflect on a few:

• Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator wrote:

“The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. They are a nation of rascals and deceivers.”

• All students of philosophy will at some stage read the works of the great medieval scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas who wrote:

St. Thomas Aquinas

“The Jews should not be allowed to keep what they have obtained from others by usury; it were best that they were compelled to work so that they could earn their living instead of doing nothing but becoming avaricious.”

• While many are familiar with the anti-Semitism of the composer Richard Wagner, his no less illustrious father-in-law, Franz Liszt had this to say: “The day will come when all nations amidst which the Jews are dwelling will have to raise the question of their wholesale expulsion, a questionwhich will be one of life or death, good health or chronic disease, peaceful existence or perpetual social fever.”
• And what of US President Ulysses S. Grant, who 1862, in the heat of the Civil War fighting against slavery, issued Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. He explained that the measure amounted to “special regulations of the Treasury Department have been violated….mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders.”
• While we may be comfortable reclining in a Ford sedan, who can be comfortable with the words of the company’s founder Henry Ford when he said in 1921: “Jews have always controlled the business… The motion picture influence of the United States and Canada . . . is exclusively under the control – moral and financial of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind.”
  

  Richard Wagner

And what of our 20^th century writers, whose works we cherish like – Roald Dahl, H.G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw:

• Roald Dahl, the beloved children’s book author, expressed that “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity….even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”
  

  Roald Dahl

• The British writer H.G. Wells had a lot to say on the subject. In the Anatomy of Freedom, he writes: “Zionism is an expression of Jewish refusal to assimilate. If the Jews have suffered, it is because they have regarded themselves as a chosen people.”
  In a 1933 letter he pens: “A careful study of anti-Semitism prejudice and accusations might be of great value to many Jews, who do not adequately realize the irritations they inflict.”

Of course, persecution of the Jews is not the fault of the persecutor but the persecuted according to Well’s, who in private correspondence labeled Karl Marx “a shallow third-rate Jew,” and “a lousy Jew”.

• The wondrous writer of Pygmalion, transformed into one of the most beloved musicals of all times – “My Fair Lady”, Georg Bernard Shaw expressed in the London Morning Post, December 3, 1925:

“This is the real enemy, the invader from the East, the Druze, the ruffian, the oriental parasite; in a word: the Jew. This craving for bouquets by Jews is a symptom of racial degeneration.”

As Israel celebrates in 2017, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, it is sad to read the words of Shaw in the Literary Digest, October 12, 1932:

Ulysses S. Grant

“The Jews are worse than my own people. Those Jews who still want to be the chosen race – chosen by the late Lord Balfour – can go to Palestine and stew in their own juice. The rest had better stop being Jews and start being human beings.”

George Bernard Shaw

In other words, according to Shaw, Jews were not “human beings”!

Is it not this belief of Shaw that only a few years later led to the “Final Solution”?

Come Hell or High Waters

And joining this august company is Roger Waters on a ‘crusade’ to silent Israeli artists and to sabotage any international artists performing in Israel.

Not sufficient that Israel is surrounded by enemies that want little more than its physical annihilation, Waters now is hell-bent on its cultural obliteration.

Is he calling for cultural boycotts of Syria that is on a spree of wholesale murder and mayhem or of its complicit backers Russia and Iran, that have left over half a million dead, and many million refuges?

Is he calling for boycotts for some the world’s other major human rights violators such as Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Myanmar, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan?

Of course not!

Herbert George Wells (H.G Wells)

Henry Ford

Only Israel is “chosen”, a word that H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw so connivingly ridicule. Waters happily adds his voice in this anti-Semitic chorus that periodically reaches fiendish crescendos that has less musical names such as ‘Inquisitions’, ‘pogroms’ and ‘concentration camps’. Next up: the destruction of the State of Israel.

Is it a surprise why Jews not only need an Israel, but a strong Israel – an Israel that can defend itself and deter others seeking its destruction?

Troubled Waters

In a September issue of the The New York Times, Waters penned an article “Congress Shouldn’t Silence Human Rights Activists”. In it, he attacks efforts by the US Congress to combat the BDS campaign, describing it as a form of censorship.

Where does Waters get off on this hypocrisy?

“BDS is a campaign whose primary weapon is censorship and whose activists put considerable energy into silencing Israeli artists, as well as international artists who schedule shows in, express support for, or even simply visit Israel,” wrote David Renzer and Steve Schnur co-founders of Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) in a September 2017 Op-Ed in The Jerusalem Post.

Note BDS hypocrisy in the actions listed hereunder that fails to ‘trouble’ Mr. Waters:

• During the 2014 Israeli film festival in Carpentras, France, the screening of the Israeli documentary Dancing in Jaffa about bringing Arab and Jewish children together through a ballroom dance was met with 20 BDS activists throwing stink bombs at the audience while screaming anti-Israel epitaphs. The film’s director, Hilla Medalia, had to be escorted to her hotel by the French police.
• In 2015, the American Jewish singer Matisyahu was disinvited from the Rototom Sunsplash music festival in Spain after he refused to bow to BDS demands that he make a statement against Israel. Matisyahu did in fact make a statement where he instead revealed that “it was appalling that as the one publicly Jewish American artist scheduled for the festival, they were trying to coerce me into making political statements.”

Is this not shades of Spain’s ‘iniquitous’ 15^th century past that led to death and exile?

Does there remain: “The Dark Side Of Spain”?

BDS activists have sent death threats to artists scheduled to perform in Israel, including Paul McCartney and Salif Keïta, the Afro-pop singer-songwriter from Mali.  However, they along with The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Santana, Elton John, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Guns N’ Roses, Rhianna and many others have performed in Israel in defiance of BDS.

As Radiohead’s singer and songwriter Edward Yorke said:

“Music, art and academia is about crossing borders not building them, about open minds not closed ones, about shared humanity, dialogue and freedom of expression. I hope that makes it clear.”

Clearly not to Waters and his BDS chums!

Durban Disaster

With BDS crediting its genesis to the 2001 Conference against racism in Durban, South Africans should be aware of this organisation’s real agenda.

Apart from harassing international artists to cancel their shows in Israel, they bully and threaten Palestinians who wish to engage with Israelis.

Omar Barghouti

Omar Barghouti, a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and a co-founder of BDS refuses to engage with Israelis. He accuses Palestinians who do of displaying “moral blindness,” calling them “clinically delusional”.

Who truthfully is “blind” and “dilutional”?

And then the hypocrisy?

Waters in his New York Times Piece champions the “freedom of expression”; yet when it comes to those that might have contrary views, he unashamedly tramples on their “freedoms of expression.”

Ask the world-renowned pianist Yossi Reshef from Germany.

On the evening of March 12, 2013, the classical pianists’ performance to a full auditorium at Wits University in Johannesburg was disrupted and abruptly ended when BDS thugs – including members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Muslim Students Association – broke into the auditorium.

In the ensuing chaos, Reshef and several ambassadors in the audience were immediately evacuated by security personnel.

Reshef’s only “crime” was that he was born in Israel, even though the Berlin resident had not lived there in years.

The Writing is on ‘The Wall’

What is happening today in South Africa by creating a culture of hate against Israelis and Israeli-born visitors – trying to bar them from South African campuses – is reminiscent of the “Judenrein” policies of the not so distant past. Note the proposal put forward in September 2017 by the Palestine Solidarity Forum, calling on UCT to implement an academic boycott of Israeli universities. “This academic boycott would require that UCT reject forming any institutional ties with Israeli universities.”

These universities are losing their moral high ground and can no longer claim to be bastions of free speech.

Klaas Mokgomole, a member of Africans for Peace, sees the matter differently.

“Africans for Peace is about bringing two parties to the table and engaging in dialogue. We need to be promoting peace in the Middle East, not boycotts.”

He adds that the boycott campaign is taking “the focus away from real burning issues confronting South Africa” over an issue “that few in the country even understand.”

From Richard to Rodger

Despite Waters trying to whitewash BDS members as “human rights activists” they are nothing more than a band of bullies.

Its aim is not to seek a SOLUTION but a DISSOLUTION – the dissolution of the State of Israel.

Listen to BDS’s founder Omar Barghouti who says, “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” referring to all of Israel. He chooses his words carefully when he says:

“You would have a Palestine next to a Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel.”

In other words – no Israel!

This is ‘music to the ears’ of anti-Semites and might explain why Israel is hardly partial to the sounds of Richard Wagner nor the rantings of Roger Waters.

Israel can and will do, very nicely, without either!