Roger Waters claims ‘no evidence’ of Oct. 7 Hamas rapes, insists he’s not antisemitic
Musician refuses to condemn terror onslaught, defends telling Israelis to ‘go back to Eastern Europe or the US or wherever you came from’; Na’amat urges Israeli radio not to play his songs
Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters said there was “no evidence” that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on October 7, in a contentious interview with broadcaster Piers Morgan on Tuesday that mostly focused on the musician’s longtime opposition to the State of Israel.
At various points in the interview, Waters suggested that the Israeli government intentionally allowed the Hamas slaughter to happen, appeared to deny there was any systematic killing of civilians by Hamas, and defended a video he published on YouTube advising Israelis to “go back to Eastern Europe or the United States or wherever you came from.”
Explaining that video — in which he later said that Israelis who chose to stay in their homes would be “welcome” in a new Palestinian state — Waters said, “I am in tears over Gaza every morning when I wake up. I’m only 80 years old, I have never experienced the genocide of a whole people in front of my eyes happening every day.”
Waters claimed the war in Gaza is the most important issue impacting the world, calling for Israel to apologize “to the whole human race.”
He said that he appeared on Morgan’s program in order to advocate for candidates in the United Kingdom’s upcoming general elections, calling Labour leader Keir Starmer, who is poised to lead his party to a landslide victory, “a bought man.”
Waters endorsed Starmer’s opponent in his local race, Andrew Feinstein, as well as a few other candidates, including Leanne Mohamad, a 23-year-old independent of Palestinian descent who described the October 7 onslaught as “a historic sight,” writing “liberation is possible” in a post on X that she later deleted.
Israel radio boycott calls
In response to the interview, the head of the women’s organization Na’amat appealed to Israeli radio stations to stop playing any of Waters’s songs, saying Israelis should “not contribute to the livelihood through royalties to a denier of the rape and massacre of October 7,” even if such a move is a “symbolic step.”
In a statement to the Ynet news site, the head of the Eco99 station said that since the start of the war, it had already greatly minimized the artist’s musical airtime and now would “not play his songs for the foreseeable future.”
Kan public radio would not commit to completely barring his work from its airwaves, noting that its music editors consider many factors when deciding on playlists and “will take into account these shocking statements.” Army Radio did not officially respond to Ynet’s request for comment, although the site quoted unnamed insiders who suggested Waters would not be heard on the station anytime soon.
In the weeks and months after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, and sparking the ongoing war between Israel and the terror group, Waters suggested that there was “something fishy” about the narrative surrounding the attack.
“We don’t know if we will ever get much of the story,” Waters said in a November 7 interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald, adding at the time, “They’re calling it their 9/11. What actually happened on the American 9/11? Nobody knows.”
On Tuesday, Waters refused to condemn the attack, telling Morgan, “I’m not going to have this conversation.”
“If Hamas committed war crimes, I condemn it,” he said, before defending his claim in the November interview that it was impossible to know what really took place.
“I’m not saying that part of the Palestinian resistance movement didn’t cross that wire fence into what’s called Israel,” Waters went on. “What I’m saying is, there’s all this talk about, ‘Does Israel have a right to defend itself?’ Why didn’t Israel defend itself that morning?”
Pressed about Hamas’s own footage of the attack, which the terrorists filmed extensively using mobile cameras affixed to their clothing, Waters called for “an actual, real investigation” and suggested that Israel would not allow one to take place.
Waters then credited several alternative news outlets for “debunking all the filthy, disgusting lies that the Israelis told after October the 7th about burning babies and women being raped,” insisting there was “no evidence whatsoever” of sexual assault.
“Actually, women were raped,” Morgan responded.
A February report by the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict found that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across the Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations.”
The report also noted several patterns of “murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down — and some totally naked — tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head.”
Asked about Kfir Bibas, the then-9-month-old baby taken hostage with his family from Kibbutz Nir Oz, Waters told Morgan, “Piers, you may or may not be making it up— I know you believe nonsense that you’re told by ZAKA.”
ZAKA is an organization of mostly ultra-Orthodox volunteers whose purpose is to collect bodies from the scene of terror attacks and road accidents for burial according to Jewish law.
The group, which was responsible for handling many of the bodies left in the aftermath of the attack, has been connected to two high-profile stories that were ultimately unsubstantiated.
Waters rejected the use of the term “terrorism” to describe the attack, describing it as “resistance” by oppressed people in “prison.”
Responding to accusations of antisemitism, Waters told Morgan, “I’m not antisemitic even very faintly,” adding, “You know who would know if Roger Waters were an antisemite? Roger Waters would know, because I would have feelings about Jews!”
In the final twenty minutes of the interview, Waters accused “Western powers” of “murdering Ukrainians” by encouraging them, “against their will,” to fight off Russia’s 2022 invasion.
He also spoke about his relationship with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who was recently released on a plea deal, and rejected Morgan’s assertion that Assange did not sufficiently redact some of the files he released to the public.
