When I called for peace, Israeli audience fell silent: Pink Floyd's Roger Waters

By Dilara Hamit

Former Pink Floyd lyricist Roger Waters told how after he called for peace with Palestine during a concert in Israel, his audience suddenly fell silent.

Speaking this week to Turkish national broadcaster TRT World, he told how in 2016, he canceled a concert after learning the venue in Israel’s Hayarkon Park was built on Palestinian graves, and then “moved the gig to an agricultural community where they grow chickpeas.”

"So we did a gig there, we had 60,000 people came, I think, at the time, it was the biggest gig that had ever been in Israel. And it was a huge success,” he said.

During the concert, he continued, he decided to take a stand.

“When I got up on my hind legs, and I said now then, you are the generation of young Israelis who must make peace with your neighbors," the audience quickly went from enthusiasm to silence, he recalled.

Waters also described his impression of visiting the Israeli-occupied West Bank a year after the concert.

"The absolute disdain and disgust with which me with a British passport in an UNRWA (UN agency) vehicle, was treated by all the young Israeli border guards. And I remember thinking at the time, if they acted like that to me, what must be they'd be like, to the Palestinians..”

Now, he said, “of course, we know exactly what they're like to the Palestinians, because they are as we speak, committing genocide in Gaza,” referring to the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, which since Oct. 7 has taken over 16,000 lives, most of them women and children.

Waters, describing Israel's attacks as "beyond imagination," said: "People in Gaza have been bombed day and night by F-16s for weeks. But you ... cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like."