Don’t boycott Roger Waters over Hamas rapes – The Forward

Roger Waters, circa 2018 Photo by Getty Images

TEL AVIV – One evening exactly 38 years ago, a few weeks before my 18th birthday and four months before my draft into the Israeli army, I was sitting on the beach with my two best friends Uzi and Oren, trying to find a good song for our funerals.

All three of us had medical problems that prevented us from being sent into combat or risking our lives. But we still felt that the happier phase of our lives was coming to an end and it wouldn’t hurt to approach the next phase – which would soon begin at the draft center – armed with the right dirge. I can’t remember which of us was drawn to Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were here”, but from the moment it was suggested, we all couldn’t get the song out of our heads and couldn’t imagine it being done any other way.

Less than two years after that night on the beach, Uzi and I attended Oren’s military funeral. He hadn’t died on the front lines, not even close. But that didn’t stop a line of spotty-faced guys in uniform that none of us knew from firing volleys at his grave. Before the funeral, Uzi and I had talked about the song and our three-way agreement, but neither of us had the courage to bring it up to Oren’s devastated parents.

I spent the entire funeral singing “Wish You Were Here” to myself. To this day, when I think of Oren, that song comes to mind and captures something of the person I was at 18, something of missing an era that will never return, something of losing a friend.

I had to think again about the song and its lyrics when I heard: interview with Roger Waters, the lead singer of Pink Floyd, in which he said there was “no evidence” that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women during the October 7 massacre. In response to his denial, the chairwoman of the Israeli women’s organization Na’amat called on all Israeli radio stations to stop playing Waters’ songs.

“So you think you can tell heaven from hell? Blue sky from pain?” Waters sings in “Wish You Were Here”, together with fellow soloist David Gilmour.

How I wish you were here.

We are just two lost souls swimming in a goldfish bowl year after year

What have we discovered when we go through the same old things over and over again?

Same old fears. I wish you were here.

When I teach creative writing, I always tell my students that a good story, by definition, has to be more intelligent than the person who wrote it. If they’re less intelligent, that means the author didn’t write a story, they assembled a piece of Ikea furniture.

Most of the masterpieces I know were more intelligent than their creators, and often more decent and purely good than they are. We have many songs, stories and films by obviously unbearable people that nevertheless help us feel and understand ourselves better. Should we give up all these works of art just because the person who created them was also responsible for other, less human or less intelligent things?

I don’t know Roger Waters, although I’m pretty sure he’s an unpleasant guy who really doesn’t like me or my people. But when I listen to his songs, which have accompanied me for decades, I find it difficult to see in them the moral flaw that I find in Waters himself.

“Wish You Were Here” was a gift I received four decades ago. A gift that helped me name the pain, confusion, and regret that accompanied me – and still accompany me. The idea of ​​never listening to that song again just because of one of its co-writers’ opinions on it is a lousy thing to me.

I don’t know how upset Waters would be if his songs were no longer played in Israel, but I’m pretty sure that for many listeners, myself included, such a retaliatory boycott would mean that we would lose something profound and touching, something unique that can remind us of who we are.

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