The fetching Polly Samson has been the lyricist for many of Pink Floyd’s songs. She is also the wife of a former Pink Floyd member, the guitarist David Gilmour, who for many decades has been at odds with his former bandmate Roger Waters about all sorts of things, including Waters’ obsessive hatred of Israel. Now Polly Samson has delivered her own blow to Waters in the form – what else these days? — of a tweet. She doesn’t hold back. More on this story can be found here: “‘Antisemitic to Your Rotten Core’: Roger Waters Accused of Antisemitism by Former Pink Floyd Bandmate, Lyricist,” by Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, February 7, 2023:
Musician Roger Waters is facing a barrage of criticism from his former bandmate and lyricist after comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in an interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung last week.
“The Israelis are committing genocide,” the former Pink Floyd frontman told Berliner Zeitung, according to an English translation of the interview that Waters shared on his website. “Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period … We believed ourselves to be inherently superior to the indigenous people, just as the Israelis do in Palestine. Well, we weren’t and neither are the Israeli Jews.”
Israel’s Jews do not believe themselves to be “inherently superior to the indigenous people” in the place, Judea, that the Romans renamed “Palestine.” The Jews are the “indigenous people” of that place. They’ve inhabited the area uninterruptedly for 3500 years. The Muslim Arabs arrived only in the 7th century, more than 2000 years after Jews are recorded as living there.
In response, Polly Samson, a lyricist for Pink Floyd and wife of band-member David Gilmour, wrote on Twitter: “You are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”
Samson wrote lyrics for Pink Floyd’s 1994 album The Division Bell. Gilmour, who has had a rift with Waters for decades, then re-shared Samson’s tweet and added that “every word [is] demonstrably true.”
Polly Samson wrote lyrics for Pink Floyd over a period of 20 years. That’s four years longer than Roger Waters was with the band. Both she and her husband David Gilmour were intimately acquainted with Waters’ “tax-avoiding,” which is why I suspect Waters won’t be eager to sue Samson for libel. Gilmour, it ought to be noted, has given away tens of millions of dollars to charities. Roger Waters appears to have given away much much less. Samson and Gilmour were also well aware of Waters’ “misogynistic” attitudes and acts. What went on off-stage with groupies, for example? What did he say to his bandmates about women? And his habit of “lip synching” has been going on since 1984. Do an Internet search for “Roger Waters” and “lip-synching” for many embarrassing examples. ”Lying, thieving, hypocritical” — let us hope Waters sues Polly Samson for libel so that she can bring her supporting evidence to the public. But I don’t think he dares.
Waters, 79, called the accusations “incendiary and wildly inaccurate” in a statement that he released on Twitter, adding that he denies the allegations “entirely.”
Waters — who is an avid support of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — further claimed that Israel has a right to exist “as long as it is a true democracy, as long as no group, religious or ethnic, enjoys more human rights than any other. But unfortunately that is exactly what is happening in Israel and Palestine. The government says that only Jewish people should enjoy certain rights. So it can’t be described as democratic.”
Israel, pace Waters, is a “true democracy.” It holds real, not sham, elections. Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs have the same civil, religious, and political rights. Israel is quite unlike the Palestinian Authority, whose President, Mahmoud Abbas, is now in the eighteenth year of his four-year-term – but that doesn’t seem to bother Roger Waters, a keen supporter of the P.A. And Israel’s democracy is quite different, too, from what happens in Gaza, where Hamas, that hasn’t held an election since 2007, rules with an iron fist. It is strange that Waters claims to be disturbed by Israel’s supposed lack of democracy. After all, Waters has been a strong supporter of Assad’s dictatorship in Syria, and lately, he has been declaring his support for the dictator Vladimir Putin and his war of aggression against Ukraine. In one respect only are Israeli Jews treated differently from Israeli Arabs. They must, while Arabs may, serve in the military
He also said that accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid “accurately describe[s] the reality in the occupied territory. I see that more and more clearly since I’ve been part of the BDS movement.” He told Berliner Zeitung later in the interview that he denies being antisemitic but also talked about his efforts to convince others in the music industry not to perform in Israel in support of the BDS movement….
The Arab population of Israel has gone from 160,000 in 1948 to more than two million today. The Arab population in the West Bank has gone from 900,000 in 1967 to 2.8 million in 2022. If Israel is guilty of “genocide,” it has a most peculiar way of going about it.
During the interview, Waters also voiced his continued support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said he found it “really, really sad” that his former Pink Floyd bandmates released the benefit song Hey Hey Rise Up last year, featuring Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk, that helped raised funds for humanitarian aid given to those affected by the Russian-Ukraine war….
A syllogism: No decent person could possibly support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Roger Waters enthusiastically supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ergo …
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine last year, Waters referred to Israel as “a supremacist, settler colonialist project that operates a system of apartheid.” He has previously accused Jewish billionaire philanthropist Sheldon Adelson of being a “puppet master” controlling the US government and his past tours have featured a massive pig emblazoned with a Star of David. He also accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid” and “international crimes” in a November 2012 address at the United Nations. In 2021, he suggested that it’s impossible to speak the “truth” about Israel because of Holocaust guilt.
Yes, how true: everyone is afraid to “speak the truth” about Israel. Everyone, that is, except for the UN General Assembly, that routinely places the Jewish state in the dock at its kangaroo court. Since 2015, the General Assembly has adopted 140 resolutions criticizing Israel, mainly over its treatment of the Palestinians, its relationships with neighboring countries, and other alleged wrongdoings. Over the same period, it has passed only 68 resolutions against all other countries combined. And everyone is afraid to “speak the truth” about Israel except for the UN Security Council, where only an American veto prevents an endless series of anti-Israel resolutions from being adopted. And everyone is afraid to speak the “truth” about Israel except at the UN Human Rights Council, where there is now a permanent item on its agenda, requiring that at every meeting of the Council it must discuss how Israel governs what the UNHRC calls “the Palestinian territories.” And everyone, as Roger Waters insists, is “afraid to speak the truth” about Israel – that is, criticize it – except for the EU, which is always scolding Israel for its “settlements” on “occupied Palestinian land,” and except for the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (O.I.C.), always ready to denounce the Jewish state, and telling the “truth” about Israel just the way Roger Waters conceives of it.
Roger Waters’ spittle-flecked anti-Israel venom has received a riposte from Polly Samson. I know I’ve quoted her tweet above, but I cannot resist repeating her single perfect sentence of invective just one more time:
You are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.
Hear, hear.
