Like always: Pink Floyd reunites to support Palestine

British band criticises arrest of those aboard Women’s Boat to Gaza in official statement

This may not be the reunion fans had been hoping for but Pink Floyd has come together to support a pro-Palestinian activist group, reported radio.com.

The Women’s Boat to Gaza is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which contains 13 women, including the 1976 Nobel peace laureate from Northern Ireland, Mairead Maguire. It journeyed from Barcelona to Gaza in September, in order to bring attention to Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza strip. The organisation posted on its website that they lost contact with the boat on October 5 and has presumed that the Israeli Occupation Navy has surrounded it in international waters.

This prompted the legendary British rock band to release an official statement. “Pink Floyd reunited to stand with the Women of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla,” the statement read. “David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Roger Waters stand united in support of the Women of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and deplore their illegal arrest and detention in international waters by the Israeli Defence Force.”

This is not the first time Waters has shared his stance on the Israeli government and called for a cultural boycott of the country. “It’s not the Israeli people, not Jews and not Judaism. I would never dream of attacking them,” he told Rolling Stone back in October 2015. “In fact, a lot of the Israelis are people who are putting the most into fighting the hardest, because they believe it is the most effective tool for changing policies of their own government.’

According to The Independent, it was back in 2006 that Waters’ views regarding the Middle East changed. He had been invited for a gig in Tel Aviv when Palestinian artists urged him to speak up against Israel. The rocker agreed to change the location of the concert so as to accommodate more people. However, the tickets had already been sold and the audience turned out be entirely Jewish Israeli.

“There were no Palestinians there…just 60,000 Jewish Israelis, who could not have been more welcoming, nice and loyal to Pink Floyd. Nevertheless, it left an uncomfortable feeling,” Waters previously shared. Subsequently, he travelled around the West Bank and even witnessed the security barrier separating Israel from the Occupied Territories. In fact, he also sprayed a message from Pink Floyd’s iconic hit Another Brick in the Wall that read, “We don’t need no thought control.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2016.

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