In a new Al Jazeera TV interview, ex-Pink Floyd bassist/singer Roger Waters leveled some barbed criticism at Bono after the U2 frontman paid homage onstage to the victims of the Hamas terror attacks on Israel in October 2023.
Videos by American Songwriter
After answering a viewer’s question what he thought about those who say that artists shouldn’t express their political opinions, which he felt was absurd, Waters shifted the subject and brought up the U2 singer.
“Anybody who knows Bono should go and pick him up by his ankles and shake him until he stops being a [giant] s—,” he loudly declared. “[W]e have to start speaking to these people and saying, ‘Your opinion is so disgusting and degrading, when you stand up for the Zionist entity…’”
Waters continued, “What he did in the Sphere in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, singing about the Stars of David, was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
About’s Bono Onstage Tribute
At U2’s October 8, 2023, concert at the Sphere venue, a day after the Hamas attacks, Bono changed a line in the band’s hit “Pride (In the Name of Love)” from “Free at last, they took your life,” to “Stars of David, they took your life.” The performance took place a day after militants killed and kidnapped many Israelis in a series of coordinated attacks, including an assault on a music festival.
In introducing the song, Bono told the crowd, “In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence…But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us…and those beautiful kids at that music festival.”
Roger Waters Insists He’s Not Antisemitic
Since the Hamas attacks, it’s believed that the Israeli military has killed an estimated tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them civilians, during a counteroffensive operation.
Waters, who has long been vocal critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, has strongly denied accusations that he is antisemitic.
During the interview, he maintained that the Israeli army’s deadly invasion of Gaza proves that those who have stood up for Palestinian rights in recent decades are “not anti-semitic.”
He added, “[O]ur motivations are not against the Jewish religion or the Jewish people, we are [motivated] by the crew of thugs who are running the Zionist entity in Israel.”
Roger Waters Reached Out to Other Artists About Israel-Palestine Conflict
After his comments about Bono, Waters went on to explain that he has occasionally contacted other artists whose actions he’s disagreed with regarding Israel and Palestine, with mixed results.
“I try not to get personal about these things, but I’ve spent so many years writing fruitless letters to [some], not all,” he said. “A number of people have answered my letters politely and whatever, and there are a group of us—I’m not going to start naming all the names now—in the music industry who are standing up for human rights.”
