Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters claimed that he has been banned from the University of Pennsylvania campus ahead of a “Palestinian” literature festival over the weekend at which he is one of the guest speakers.
In a video taken in a car on Friday, Waters said: "We've just come from the airport, where we just flew in tp Pennsylvania. We're going to the Penn State campus, to the Irving Arena, where I was supposed to be taking part in a panel in a couple of hours' time this afternoon. But I've been told that I'm not allowed into the Irving Arena because they have made arrangements for me to attend the panel by ZOOM. And the fact that I've come all the way here actually to be present because I care deeply about the issues that are being discussed apparently cuts no ice with the campus police or whoever it is."
The 'Palestine Writes' festival sparked outrage among Jewish students and faculty as well as in the American Jewish community due to the antisemitism expressed by several guest speakers, including Roger Waters. These speakers have endorsed violence and terrorism against Israelis and several of them have called for the complete destruction of the State of Israel. The speakers have also engaged in antisemitic conspiracy theories to explain the opposition to their speaking on campus.
Waters has faced accusations of antisemitism for years due to the extremism of his anti-Israel activism. At one concert he displayed a floating pig emblazoned with a Star of David.
During a concert in Berlin in May 2023, Waters compared teenage Holocaust victim Anne Frank to Shireen Abu Aqleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who was shot and killed while covering an active combat zone. Waters also dressed up as an SS soldier.
Waters' antics have led the US State Department to say recently that the former Pink Floyd singer "has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.''
Waters' former bandmates have also called him antisemitic. Earlier this year, Polly Samson, the wife of former Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, wrote to Water on Twitter: "You are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.
Gilmour retweeted his wife's post and wrote: "Every word demonstrably true."
The 'Palestine Writes' festival began the day after the University of Pennsylvania's Hillel chapter was vandalized by a person shouting antisemitic profanities.
The intruder slipped into the building behind a member of the Hillel community; smashed a table and podium; flipped over a table and trash can in the lobby; scattered papers; and yelled profanities, according to a report in The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Multiple witnesses said that they heard the intruder shout: “F—k the Jews” and “They killed JC."