TEL AVIV – Pink Floyd front man and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions promoter Roger Waters was furious when he found out Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry had punked him with an April Fools joke announcing a summer gig in Tel Aviv.
In the April 1 tweet, the ministry’s account posted that Waters would be playing in Tel Aviv on July 16. “Mark your calendars!”
While most Twitter users quickly picked up on the gag, some fans fell for it, asking the Pink Floyd musician to consider a performance in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel. Still more asked that he perform in the Gaza Strip while he was in the region.
@SussexFriendsIsrael joked, “Is that before or after he converts?” while Arsen Ostrovsky, an international human rights lawyer and pro-Israel advocate, quipped, “Will he also be playing in Ma’ale Adumim? Asking for friend …” in reference to a large Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Waters, however, failed to see the humor, tweeting, all caps, “HO! FUCKING HO! EXCEPT THIS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER.”
He linked the tweet to a Facebook post in which he smeared Israel: “THE MURDER OF UNARMED CHILDREN AND PARAMEDICS AND JOURNALISTS AND OTHER PEACEFUL PROTESTERS BY COWARDS IN UNIFORM WITH HIGH POWERED SNIPER RIFLES FROM BEHIND FORTIFIED POSITIONS IS NOT A MATTER FOR JEST.”
“YOU DISGUST ME, AND YOU DISGUST THE WHOLE OF THE REST OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD,” he wrote.
The “peaceful protests” Waters refers to in his post are the so-called March of the Return riots organized by Hamas along the border with Gaza in which Palestinians have hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers, burned tires, launched petrol and explosives-laden “terror kites” and other incendiary devices over the border into Israeli territory, infiltrated the security fence with weapons and used snipers to shoot Israeli soldiers.
Many posters, like Ostrovsky, told Waters to “lighten up.”
Another user told him to calm down, it was just an April fools joke. “But all you see & think about is blood & hate. Also, all caps, yeah, that doesn’t sound frantic at all… #Israel.”
Some posters took on a more serious tone and hoped that Waters would see the error of his ways.
“On the other hand, you could use your talent to promote peace. Why not play there?… at least you’d have an audience that might listen. Aggression begets more aggression – fight it from within,” one tweeted.
Another said: “You know they love you in Israel. They hate that the love they feel is facing hate and walls in the name of BDS. Mothers on both sides are crying, but only one’s tears are being spoken about. BDS doesn’t hurt IL government, it bites both people. It’s time to change the key. Duet.”
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