Roger Waters clashes with Piers Morgan in a heated interview

An interview between Piers Morgan And Roger Waters It was inevitably destined to provoke moments of great tension and yesterday, July 2nd, it happened.

When the former Pink Floyd frontman joined the former editor of the News of the World (in 1994 he ran the British tabloid newspaper owned by the Murdoch family) in the British TV programme “Piers Morgan Uncensored”, the two heatedly discussed the war crimes committed in Gaza and those that occurred on October 7, which started the conflict.

The interview was announced by Morgan on Instagram, who wrote: “Update: I interviewed Pink Floyd star Roger Waters yesterday, after calling him “the world’s dumbest rock star” and a “complete and utter idiot.” In light of those statements, it went about as expected.

In particular, Waters has always been an outspoken supporter of Palestine’s right to defend itself and has attracted numerous accusations of anti-Semitism due to his stance and other factors, such as having previously worn an alleged Nazi-style SS uniform during his tour last year while celebrating “The Wall” (Read Ernesto Assante about it here) and historic accusations of anti-Semitism by his associates. He has vehemently denied all the accusations.

Because Waters is one of rock’s most outspoken and vocal figures and Morgan has made a career out of being “dogmatic,” tensions arose when the two discussed what happened on October 7, 2023. That was the day Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups launched coordinated incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. It was the first invasion of Israeli territory since 1948. The October 7 incursions included the attack on the Nova music festival, which left 364 civilians killed, several kidnapped, and many more injured.

During the interview, the situation degenerated when Waters proposed an in-depth investigation into what happened on October 7. The events that occurred on that occasion, according to Waters, who in his analysis starts from a UN report, are of dubious origin. The eighty-year-old former Pink Floyd supported once again the right of Palestine to defend itself from Israel, which is an occupying force.

“I’m not saying that a part of the Palestinian resistance movement didn’t cross that border. I’m not saying it didn’t happen at all,” the artist said. “What I mean is that there’s so much talk about Israel having the right to defend itself, why didn’t Israel defend itself that morning?”

“Why did they wait seven hours before they started machine-gunning everyone?” he asked. Waters also praised Al Jazeera’s investigation of that day. “And all the great work that the Grayzone did to expose all the dirty, disgusting lies that the Israelis told after October 7, about children being burned and women being raped.”

When the host suggested that the women were sexually assaulted and raped on October 7, Waters dismissed the suggestion. “No, they weren’t,” he said. “There was no evidence. You can say whatever you want, but there is no evidence.”

No stranger to controversy, Waters drew criticism after suggesting that Israel may have targeted its own civilians, insinuating some sort of false flag operation. “All those piles of cars were destroyed by Apache missiles coming from helicopters that Hamas didn’t have,” he said.

Waters called the killing of civilians a “war crime” but refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization, defending Palestine’s right to fight back against its “oppressor.”

“People who are fighting for the liberation of Palestine have the legal and moral right to fight back against the oppressor,” he explained. “If someone invades your country, throws all the people out of their homes, steals everything and is stealing all your land and occupying all your land for 75 years, you have the absolute right to armed resistance.”

When Morgan read a tweet from Polly Samsonauthor and wife of the Pink Floyd guitarist David GilmourWaters laughed, describing him as “anti-Semitic to the core”, among a host of other incendiary adjectives. Waters has been feuding with Gilmour since his acrimonious departure from Pink Floyd in the mid-1980s.

Morgan pointed out that Waters’ rival Gilmour had retweeted, and Waters responded: “No comment. Oh, shut up… They’re public and I’m private.”