We’ve spent a few days pondering the pronouncements of Roger Waters, formerly a member of the band Pink Floyd and currently a self-righteous preacher against Israel and against entertainers who dare to perform there. In the last couple of years he’s written articles attacking Robbie Williams and Dianne Warwick. Most recently, in early October, Salon ran an open letter from Waters to the three members of the band Bon Jovi, Jon Bon Jovi, David Bryan, and Tico Torres. The earlier pieces were aggressive enough; but this time around he really took off the gloves, telling Bon Jovi that by performing in Israel they were standing “shoulder to shoulder”

With the settler who burned the baby

With the bulldozer driver who crushed Rachel Corrie

With the soldier who shot the soccer player’s feet to bits

With the sailor who shelled the boys on the beach

With the sniper who killed the kid in the green shirt…

And so on. His last line: “To stand by silent and indifferent is the greatest crime of all.”

Perhaps because of its combative and graphic nature, Waters’s open letter to Bon Jovi drew even more attention than his previous Salon efforts. One response, from Israeli blogger Doron Goldberg, gave Waters a dose of his own medicine, accusing him of standing “shoulder to shoulder”

With the “passover massacre” suicide bomber who killed 30 and injured 172.

With the sniper who killed the 10 month old Shalhevet Pass.

With the suicide bomber who killed 17 in a disco….

Jon Bon Jovi, in any event, wasn’t moved by Waters’s attack. “It doesn’t interest me,” he said. “I told my managers to give one simple answer: That I’m coming to Israel and I’m excited to come.”

As it happened, Bon Jovi’s performance for an audience of 50,000 fans in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park took place only minutes after two people were killed in a Jerusalem terrorist attack. At the concert, Jon Bon Jovi introduced the song “We Don’t Run” (“We don’t run, I’m standing my ground, / We don’t run, And we don’t back down”) by saying it “should be the fight song for Tel Aviv.”

The New York Post congratulated the band: “So here’s to Jon Bon Jovi, David Bryan on the ivories and drummer Tico Torres: They don’t run — or back down.” Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, called Waters a “front man for genocidal terrorists.” Sirius satellite radio host Howard Stern tore into Waters at length on his October 6 broadcast, wondering aloud why, if Waters — a (former) friendly acquaintance and occasional guest on his program — considers Israel stolen land, does he “live in America, a country that was founded on white people coming in and obliterating the native population? How does he stand it?” The next day, Stern picked up the subject again, noting that he’d heard privately from “many prominent people” who’d agreed strongly with his remarks — but who didn’t want to say so publicly, so scared were they of attracting the wrath of the BDS crowd. 

“Don’t be afraid to speak your mind,” Stern urged his timid allies. “Don’t let them get away with this!”