Comfortably dumb: Roger Waters says he's not an anti-Semite; Some of his best friends are Jews

Jenn Taylor | 1:41 PM on August 01, 2013

Pink Floyd founding member and Occupy supporter Roger Waters found himself in hot water recently after a concert featured a pig balloon emblazoned with a Star of David and other religious and corporate symbols.

David Draiman, vocalist for Disturbed, condemned Waters’ “flagrant display of anti-Semitism.” And Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged other entertainers to take a stand against the “grotesque display of Jew-hatred.”

On Thursday, Waters published an open letter to Rabbi Cooper.

An open letter from @rogerwaters – https://t.co/IkdhIY58dI

— Roger Waters (@rogerwaters) August 1, 2013

The letter addresses accusations that Waters is anti-Semitic, a Jew hater and a Nazi sympathizer, all of which he denies. “To peacefully protest against Israel’s racist domestic and foreign policies is NOT ANTI-SEMITIC,” he writes. The pig, you see, “represents evil” which is why “[w]e make a gift of this symbol of repression to the audience at the end of every show and the people always do the right thing. They destroy it.”

Read the whole thing on his Facebook page, but this part about why Waters can’t possibly be an anti-Semite is worth noting.

JEW-HATING? I have many very close Jewish friends, one of whom, interestingly enough, is the nephew of the late Simon Wiesenthal. I am proud of that association; Simon Wiesenthal was a great man. Also I have two grandsons who, I love more than life itself, their Mother, my daughter in law, is Jewish and so, in consequence, I’m told, are they.