Another problematic take

Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters did a concert in Germany a few days ago, which featured this:

Roger Waters projected Anne Frank’s name at recent concerts to draw comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, leading Germany’s Orthodox rabbinical association to call for a ban on Waters’ performances in the country.

Observers told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman known as a leader in the boycott Israel movement, has lumped Anne Frank together with Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in on-screen projections at concerts on his current tour. Abu Akleh was killed on an assignment in the West Bank last year.

The screen at Waters concerts also frequently shows a pig-shaped balloon emblazoned with the logo of an Israeli armaments firm. He reportedly at times dons an SS uniform and symbolically shoots a machine gun into the crowd.

But - he's been doing this for years, as it would seem this report is from 2013:

Former Pink Floyd rocker Roger Waters is one musician who isn’t afraid to voice his opinion on Israel.

Waters performed July 20 in Belgium wearing a black leather jacket with a red and white arm band, similar to that of a Nazi uniform, while pretending to fire a machine gun. The concert also featured a giant pig balloon floating above stage with the Star of David stamped all over it.

Waters has openly urged other performers to boycott Israel and has compared Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the South African apartheid. The Anti-Defamation League said that Waters has a long history using  these symbols in his concerts, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Not caring for the band, I had missed this recent story:

Polly Samson, the wife of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and a lyricist on the band’s two most recent albums, has spoken out against former bandleader Roger Waters on Twitter, describing him as an antisemite and a “Putin apologist”.

“Sadly [Waters] you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” she wrote. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”...

 Samson’s tweet is seemingly in reference to an interview Waters did with the Berliner Zeitung newspaper earlier this month, reposted in translation on Waters’ website, in which he wonders if “Putin [is] a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II”, and says that Putin “governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government.”

In the interview, Waters also said that “Israel Lobby activists” were trying to have his concerts in Germany cancelled, and that “the Israelis are committing genocide. 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.” He also expresses his continued support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and that he would still play in Moscow, “given that Moscow does not run an apartheid state based on the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants.”