Howard Stern lashes boycotter Roger Waters
Former Pink Floyd bassist had accused rocker Jon Bon Jovi of standing with ‘settler who burned the baby’ by playing in Tel Aviv
American radio personality Howard Stern delivered a seven-minute rant Tuesday against former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters for advocating a boycott of the Jewish state.
“He’s got to shut up, Roger Waters,” Stern said on his popular radio show.
“What is with Roger Waters and the Jews? … Where do you want the Jews to go, Roger? You want them to just go back to the concentration camp? What is it you want, f**khead?” he asked.
Stern then mocked Waters for focusing on Israel. “It seems like you’re a little too consumed with it,” he suggested.
Waters, a founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd and an activist in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, published an open letter criticizing rocker Jon Bon Jovi for performing in Tel Aviv on Oct. 3.
Read: Empathetic Bon Jovi dedicates song ‘We Don’t Run’ to Israel
A frequent critic of Israel, Waters published the letter in Salon on Friday, responding to Bon Jovi telling Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth last week that he is “excited to come” to Israel despite Waters’s efforts to deter musicians from performing there.
Waters has published similar open letters in Salon to other performers with Israel gigs, including Dionne Warwick, the Rolling Stones and Robbie Williams.
In the letter to Bon Jovi, Waters accuses the singer of standing “shoulder to shoulder” with “the settler who burned the baby,” referring to the arsonists, thought to be Jewish extremists, who firebombed a Palestinian home in August, killing a toddler and several family members, an act condemned by Israel’s leaders.
In response, Stern offered his characteristic shock-jock rhetoric.
“Why is he so bugged by Israel?” he wondered of the Pink Floyd founder. “There’s a lot of countries that were formed where originally there was somebody else there, as we did in America. But alright, now it’s there…. He’s really got it in for Israel. He doesn’t like it. He’s not into it. It seems to me it’s the only place in the Middle East that treats people halfway nicely. I bet you it’s a lot more fun living in Israel than it is in the Iran regime…or living in Iraq, or living in Saudi Arabia or living in Egypt.”
“Roger should work on getting along with the rest of Pink Floyd. He can’t even do that. He’s so f**king worried about Jews and Arabs.” He adds: “Sometimes I think with rock stars those laser lights fry their brains. Sometimes they get hit with them. I’d like to see peace within Pink Floyd before we take on the Middle East, Roger.”
In his letter to Bon Jovi, Waters lists seven additional Israelis beyond the suspected Dawabshe attackers who perpetrated attacks on Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists. He says Bon Jovi has forfeited the opportunity to stand “on the side of justice,” listing various pro-Palestinian activists and Palestinians whom Waters regards as heroes or victims.
The open letter makes no mention of any Palestinian terrorist attacks or Israeli terror victims, including the two parents killed in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank Thursday.
In a four-page magazine feature in the weekend edition of a Hebrew-language newspaper last Friday, Bon Jovi said he “always heard what a wonderful place Israel is – the birthplace of all religions.
“I have been everywhere and Israel was a place that I’ve always wanted to visit, but it never worked out. This time I insisted that Israel must be on our list and it happened!”
Bon Jovi said in the article that he would spend a few days sightseeing in Israel after his concert.
The Times of Israel Community.