Former UK PM Tony Blair
Former UK PM Tony BlairFlash 90

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair excoriated rock singer and guitarist Roger Waters late Saturday night after the Pink Floyd front man compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and warned of the dangers posed by the “extraordinarily powerful” Jewish lobby.

A frequent critic of the Jewish state and a staunch supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement, Waters recently claimed that the “parallels [between Israel] and what went on in the 1930s in Germany are so crushingly obvious,” and adding that the “extraordinarily powerful” Jewish lobby was exerting a dangerous influence in the West.

When filmmaker Ian Halperin, who is producing a documentary on Waters’ and his political views, interviewed Blair, the former Labour PM condemned Waters’ comments as “ideological poison”, the Daily Mail reported.

“I think the criticism [of Israel by Waters] is so ludicrous,” said Blair, “that it indicates a basic hostility to the notion of a homeland for the Jewish people... you’ve got to overcome the legacy of that ideological poison which has dripped into the system over many decades.”

Blair added that he saw Waters’ extreme anti-Israel position as part of a strengthening “leftist-Islamist alliance”.

“I’m a great fan of the music of Pink Floyd, but I don’t agree with Roger Waters and his campaign. I think it is part of a wider alliance which is dangerous and worries me... which is the leftist-Islamist alliance. It’s a growing problem… there is nothing progressive about a totalitarian ideology.”