Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters
Uploaded: 2022-10-06T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-06. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters

The Joe Rogan experience
Thank you very much for doing this I really appreciate it
I'm a gigantic fan, so it's a real honor and it's it's very nice to know that
you could actually play pool
Well, we've only played two rikes. Yeah, but I could see I could see how you
move the ball around
Got to get a little warmed up. Yeah, we just started. Yeah
Well, it is true that if you start playing pool against somebody you don't know
and you discover that they do
Understand that control of the cue ball is everything. Yeah, and that's
something you think. Oh, well, maybe we could have a game
Well, as soon as you looked at the table and said these are very unforgiving
pockets. I was like, oh
You know a little bit. Yeah, yeah
Well, uh, first of all, uh, it's an honor to have you in here
I'm very excited but second of all you're in the middle of a lot of things you've
you've got your tour
You've got a lot of controversy going on
It's a I really enjoyed that conversation that you had with CNN because that
kind of conversation
Is is rare to see on air and see someone as informed as you are to have these
opinions and express them so honestly and
Bravely yeah, and it was very interesting conversation
Well, I've known Michael a bit for a year or two and
He'd he actually my last kind of engagement with him with Michael's McConnish.
I'm talking about right the interview
Was when I was playing in Miami a few years ago and the local Jewish community
Decided that I shouldn't be allowed to use
Local school children to sing another brick in the wall part two because all
during the wall
Tours that I did I always use local children
Preferably from
You know undernourished communities
To come and sing with me met me between eight and twelve of them every night
and they would come in
Having having listened to the song a bit and I would rehearse them at five o'clock
in the afternoon and then boom
Up past eight they're on stage singing and
They get very excited and and obviously
But it's a wonderful thing yeah for them
but also for me and also for the band have these children come and perform with
us on stage and
the mayor of North Miami Beach or wherever it was
Came under some pressure from the local community and they did and they weren't
allowed to play so I got some other kids
But what was the objection that I'm an anti-semite?
Obviously I'm not an anti-semite let's get that clear yeah straight away if you
don't mind
Because I'm obviously not you can you studied my record going back as far as
you want
So that yeah, that's it, but that's always the objection because because I
support BDS and because I have for the last 16 years or so
BDS you know what BDS is boycott divestment and sanctions, okay?
It's it's a it's a movement that was started in 2005
In Palestinian civil society and it stands for boycott divestment and sanctions
and
So it's a movement to try and shine a light on the predicament of the
Palestinian people
particularly in the occupied territories
But also I guess in Israel itself
Using those using those using boycott and divestment from companies that like Caterpillar
or
Hewlett-Packard people like that
Who deal in the illegal settlements in the occupied territory and
sanctions well
There is there's no not many people out there who are powerful enough to impose
sanctions on other people and
and most of those
With that much power are allies of the Israeli government and so wouldn't do so
but anyway, that's what it is by and large and
since then we have made great strides in that movement and it's much bigger
movement than it was and in
consequence
The the sort of battle lines have been drawn but it's got more intense and it's
slightly less gentlemanly sport than it was 16 years ago
In my experience anyway, so 16 years ago you were allowed to have
Different opinions about conflicts. Well, no, but nobody knew about the
conflict
It was largely unknown that there was a problem at all in the in in the Holy
Land
Certainly by most of the public in this country and where I'm from from in the
UK as well
and in me I
Mean I I had accepted back in 2005 or six one of those years
To do to do a gig in Tel Aviv
I was asked in the middle of a European tour. Hey, right
They want you to go and do a gig in Tel Aviv
Is that and I went yeah, right? I didn't I didn't think twice about it. So that's
where I was then
so I'm not blaming people for not having known about
the Zionist project since 1948 and everything that had happened
although I was vaguely aware of the
Yom Kippur war the 67 war and the 75 war and so on and so forth
I knew a little bit about the history, but I wasn't really
And that's how I learned because as soon as I said I would do that gig I
started to receive emails
From supporters of BDS although it was only five or six months old at the time
mainly from North Africa to start with but then I
I got an email from omabu gutti who is um who was one of the sort of founding
Forces behind the beginnings of BDS and
He tried to persuade me to cancel the gig in higher company which is sold out
of course in a few minutes, you know and
Eventually, I was persuaded to cancel that gig but
As an act of compromise as I thought
I feel as if I'm repeating
a speech that I've all that's okay made already which I am
That's all right. I've said this so often before anyway
So I moved the gig to an ecumenical agricultural community
Called wahat asalem in Arabic and translated into Hebrew. It's um
Nevis shalom so something about peace
Where
Muslims and Christians and Druze and atheists and all live together in a
community and all their children all go to the same
School and they all mix together and they live peacefully and grow chickpeas
mainly
As an example to the rest of us if you like so we did a gig there in the open
air
And it was huge
60,000
Israelis came
What I didn't realize at the time of course was of course they were all
Israelis because Palestinians aren't allowed to travel so there couldn't be any
Palestinians there
They would need special permission, you know, to cross through checkpoints and
things which they wouldn't get
So we did this gig and
At the end of it and it was lovely. They were extremely enthusiastic. They knew
the work very well
And it was very
And all of that and lovely food backstage and it was a warm summer evening at
the end of it
I thought i'm going to say something
It was euphoric at the end of the gig and I said
So I made a little speech and I went
You are the generation of young israelis who need to make peace with your
neighbors
Start talking to the palestinian authority and the blah blah blah and whatever
And they went from
Pink Floyd to
Nothing
Nothing
It was like steel shutters had come down behind the
eyeballs of
Every one of those 60,000 young array
They were gone
And I was staggered
By that
And I was really shocked really really really shocked I couldn't believe it
And I saw it I went back the next year
And traveled extensively in the occupied territories until you go there and you
see it
You cannot believe what a shock it is you know you
Things that you wouldn't believe possible anywhere on the world like different
roads for people with different religion
Can you imagine really yeah really can you imagine you're going from
Austin to you know to dallas and
You can only go on the road if you're christian
If you're not a christian you can't go on the road
So if you're if you're atheist or some other thing you're not allowed to drive
on the road
You have to go on back roads and they're mainly
And they're all filled up with boulders and there are checkpoints everywhere
So the local indigenous people are not allowed to use the roads
And you see that and when you see it you think
I don't believe this but you get to believe it as you drive around
And all the checkpoints and they they have to go this way
Only people with yellow license plates can go through here
Which means that they're jewish israelis
And it's
Mind-numbingly
It fills you with despair when you say you think how can this possibly be
happening you know this is it's
2007 or whenever it was how can this be happening in the world?
And nobody where I live knows about it or if they do they don't care how can
they not care?
And I say you might bring it up here and say how would you feel if you weren't
a christian and that meant you couldn't use the road
I mean it's so weird that it's hard to get your mind around believing that that
is the case
But it is and that is what is called apartheid
And in those days you couldn't use the word apartheid in relation to israel it
was completely verboten in 2006
You could not use the word you would have been strung up in the press and
everywhere else and accused of being
A holocaust and iron or this and that and hitler and whatever
Now it's very difficult for anyone
To have a conversation about israel and palestine without using the word apartheid
because it is in the lexicon
And the problem is far more in the light
And we are looking at it more and there's more information for all of us about
it
Than there was then that
Is the work that bds has done and so it has made progress and i'm glad it has
because
What I desperately hope to live to see
Is a holy land
I don't care what it's called
From the river jordan to the sea where the people all have equal religious and
political and social
Rights all of them equal and so that's what I work for in the movement and
maybe we should talk about something else because I
I'm
If you wind me up, I might
Well, I'd be happy to wind you up. I mean the definition of apartheid is yes,
it is. Yeah, it's segregation
I mean that is segregation clearly. Yeah, what is this the oppression of one
ethnic group by another ethnic group?
Yes, for those reasons for the fact that they're different ethnic group
so the south african model
clearly applies except that
The south africans who survived the south african model all say that the israeli
model is far worse than the white south african model was
The white south africans at least tried to build
Well, they tried they've poured money in for a start trying to keep the black
population quiet which they failed to do
But both desmond tutu before he sadly died
and
Mandela obviously as well both came out completely and said this is a lot worse
than our conditions were in south africa before apartheid
So just discussing this and having compassion for the plight of the palestinian
people that that made them categorize you as anti-semitic
Yeah
Did anyone have
and i'm sure someone must have talked to you about this segregation did anyone
have any kind of argument that they wanted to
Bring to you as for any justification of that you mean from the israelis?
Yes
No
That's why they call me anti-semitic that's why they label anyone who criticizes
the
Apartheid policies of the state of israel without criticizing the jewish
religion or any jewish person
I mean the fact that a lot of the people who are in the government are
Of the jewish faith means that they can somehow feel they can conflate
criticism of the apartheid policies
With the general criticism of an anti-semitic criticism of the jewish people or
people who
Well, they
Nice try fellas, but it won't wash
That's not what it is and most of us who get labeled as anti-semites are not
And like jeremy corbyn for instance the guy who
Was removed from the labor party
In england on the grounds that he was accused of being at he's not anti-semitic
He's left-wing and he's pro-palestinian pro the idea that they should have
human rights the palestinian people
Who after all with a huge majority of the indigenous people?
Um in the holy land
back in the start of the 20th century
Before the start of the zionist enterprise
Which didn't really get going till 1920 although the idea
Um
The idea was happening in the late 19th century in the 1880s and 1890s
Um
Can't remember the guy's name now, but he was a russian who thought up the idea
of a return to
The promised land as it's called
Out of all t