Roger Waters and Palestinian singer Mona Miari released “Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined” in June, a more than nine-minute remake of the 1979 Pink Floyd track from The Wall. The new version reimagines the song as a tribute to the Palestinian people and Gaza, with Miari singing in Arabic and the refrain altered to conclude with “I will never become comfortably numb.”
In a WIRED interview published Monday, Waters said he hopes listeners “hear that it was prophetic — there is a right and a wrong. This is not complicated, and this song is on the right side of history.” Miari expressed hope that in ten years, listeners could “experience a free Palestine and look back at it as a testament about the truth and what happened and just cherish that sense of resistance and urgency for freedom.”
Waters addressed recurring accusations of anti-Semitism tied to his support for Palestine. “I don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in my body, I never did and I never will have,” he told WIRED. “I’m interested in human rights for my brothers and sisters, whoever they are.” The criticism intensified recently when Disturbed frontman David Draiman, who is Jewish and pro-Israel, called Waters’s stance “a massive betrayal” on a podcast. Waters responded in an open letter, calling Draiman “an obnoxious little prick” and reaffirming his commitment to “equal human rights for all human beings.”
Waters also criticized social media during the interview, saying it numbs people to global injustices. He noted that he came of age in the 1960s and 1970s before smartphones and social media existed.
Source: Consequence
