Ce n’est pas la première fois que le fondateur du groupe Pink Floyd apporte son soutien au peuple palestinien (*).
Le fondateur et bassiste du groupe Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, a publié sur le magazine « Salon » un virulent article contre l’indéfectible soutien des Etats-Unis à Israël, notamment lors de la boucherie à laquelle il s’est livré à Gaza.
Par Roger Waters
Extraits. (Voir l’article complet en anglais plus bas)
Le carnage à Gaza continue après le dernier échec des négociations de cessez-le-feu et plus de quatre semaines de bombardements asymétriques par Israël. Avec la mort de plus de 2.000 Palestiniens, et le déplacement de centaines de milliers d’autres, la complicité du gouvernement américain a été révélée au monde comme jamais auparavant. Pourtant, le leitmotiv répété infiniment et ad nauseam par le gouvernement américain autant que par les médias demeure le même: Israël a le droit de se défendre.
La perversité morale de la position américaine est stupéfiante et comment le gouvernement américain peut demander à Israël de faire plus attention à la vie des civils tout en l’armant en même temps puis en réarmant l’armée israélienne afin qu’elle puisse « plus efficacement » infliger une telle dévastation à un peuple emprisonné et occupé ».
« Les États-Unis pourraient agir pour arrêter ce massacre insensé, mais ils ne le feront pas. Au lieu de cela, ils font office de « pom-pom girls ». Les membres du Congrès reprennent stupidement à leur compte les sujets discussion israéliens sans se fendre d’une pensée à la question palestinienne ni à la préservation des vies humaines. Débordant de justice, ils plaident pour lâcher la bride à Israël, particulièrement le sénateur Rand Paul, et invoquent le droit d’Israël à l’auto-défense, malgré le fait que, en tant que puissance occupante, Israël a l’obligation de protéger les Palestiniens qu’il gouverne, et non de les massacrer.
Est-ce que les dirigeants du Congrès n’arrêtent jamais de se demander ce qu’ils feraient s’ils étaient nés palestiniens, s’ils se voyaient dépouillés de leurs maisons et biens privés et forcés de vivre sans liberté sous occupation israélienne illégale depuis 47 ans? Savent-ils ce que cela signifie d’être sous le joug barbare d’Israël et de « tondre la pelouse » ? Rarement un mot est dit sur les droits des Palestiniens qui sont pilonnés du ciel et abattus dans leurs quartiers par l’armée la plus puissante de la région. Je me demande ce que les Américains feraient si leur quartier était envahi et si ce sont eux qui vivent en état de siège? Il est fort à parier que les Américains ne le supporteraient pas.
Roger Waters | 26 août 2014 | Salon
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters: Why moral perversity of U.S. position in Gaza is stunning
I think it’s safe to say that if U.S. neighborhoods were living under siege, folks like Rand Paul wouldn’t take it
The carnage in Gaza continues after the latest collapse of cease-fire talks and over four weeks of asymmetrical bombardment by Israel. With the death of more than 2,000 Palestinians, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more, the complicity of the American government has been exposed to the world as never before. Yet the mantra repeated ad nauseam by the U.S. government and media alike remains the same: Israel has a right to defend itself.
The moral perversity of the U.S. position is stunning. How can the U.S. government ask Israel to be more careful about civilian lives while simultaneously arming and then rearming the IDF so it can more effectively inflict such devastation on an imprisoned and occupied people?
The U.S. could act to stop the senseless slaughter but it won’t. Instead, it’s cheerleading. Members of Congress are mindlessly parroting Israeli talking points without a thought given to the Palestinian perspective or to preserving human life. Brimming with righteousness, they argue for turning Israel loose – Sen. Rand Paul in particular – and invoke Israel’s right to self-defense, despite the fact that, as the occupying power, Israel has an obligation to protect the Palestinians it rules, not massacre them.
Do congressional leaders ever stop to wonder what they would do if they were born Palestinian, had their homes and private property stolen from them, and were forced to live without freedom under an illegal Israeli occupation for 47 years? Do they know what it means to be on the receiving end of Israel’s barbaric “mow the lawn” euphemism? Scarcely a word is said about the rights of Palestinians who are being pummeled from the sky and shot dead in their neighborhoods by the region’s most powerful military. What, I wonder, would Americans do if it were their neighborhoods being invaded and if they were the ones living under siege? I think it’s safe to say Americans wouldn’t stand for it.
Despite these realities, it’s far more advantageous in Washington to come down like a ton of bricks on the Palestinians and maintain that they are the cause of their own suffering. No politician’s career has ever been hurt by blaming Palestinians or by applauding Israel’s illegal occupation, colonization and war crimes.
Pressure on American politicians to conform to the party line is abetted by skewed media coverage. For instance, CNN, while purporting to be a news channel, relentlessly churns out Israeli propaganda.
It is easy for those of us who do not live under the tyranny of the occupation to condemn the military wing of Hamas for using randomly fired rockets that might cause civilian casualties in neighboring Israel, and I do unreservedly condemn it. Having said that, an occupied population has the legal right to resist the military of the occupier. The occupier has a legal obligation to protect the occupied. Under these circumstances the reporting on CNN is biased beyond all belief.
Numerically, one can readily see the bias. Far more pro-Israel guests than pro-Palestinian experts are invited on air to make their case.
An exception to that general rule, and obviously not on CNN, is Henry Siegman, a prominent Jewish voice and a former national director of the American Jewish Congress, who recently got the opportunity to expose the shortcomings of Israeli talking points. Siegman was interviewed fairly and in depth by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! Sadly Democracy Now! is not mainstream media. If only it were!
Contrast that appearance with the reception Yousef Munayyer received during an extraordinarily “unfair” Fox News interview by the execrable Sean Hannity. Actually, to dignify Hannity’s rude and infantile shouting and finger pointing as an “interview” would be wrong.
If only CNN – or Fox, for that matter – would sometimes rely for their analyses on someone as intelligent and humane as Siegman. Unfortunately, however, CNN persisted for weeks with the extremely biased analysis of Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren. Even CNN appears to have recognized how biased a contributor Oren was as it recently changed his title from CNN analyst to former ambassador.
Staunchly pro-Israel voices like Oren’s have resoundingly proclaimed: Any resistance, violent or nonviolent, in fact any criticism of Israeli colonization and denial of Palestinian rights, is off limits. What they are advocating, in essence, is perpetual armed conflict until greater Israel is a fait accompli, and complete Israeli domination over any surviving Palestinians is accepted as a reasonable status quo. Commentators such as Oren feign interest in a two-state peaceful solution but they and the state they represent resist all attempts to implement such a plan.