Palestinian American political activist Linda Sarsour received backlash after she posted a selfie with Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters from a private jet after they attended a symposium against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza.
She wrote on Instagram: “Kind, compassionate, humble, active listener—that’s Roger Waters. I spent the entire day with him yesterday, and we had great conversations about injustice, empathy, morals. He listened intently as I shared with him my story, what I believe, what hurts, what we must do to make this world a better place. We won’t always agree on everything, but Roger Waters has taken great political and personal risk to stand up for the Palestinian people. When he speaks of what he experienced visiting Palestine and continuing to see the circumstances of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—tears well up in his eyes. He treated me as an equal, and I am forever humbled to have experienced him as a human being who is much more than a rock star or entertainer—but a man full of empathy struggling to live a life worth living.”
The symposium, called “Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights” was hosted by the Media Education Foundation of the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Saturday, May 5.
The symposium had already provoked its own controversy, including opposition from the pro-Isreali Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who unsuccessfully filed an injunction request to stop the event, claiming it was anti-Semitic.
The ADL wrote a letter to Kumble Subbaswamy, the UMass Amherst Chancellor criticizing the symposium for associating the university “with a discredited concept having a singular outcome: the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.”
It continued: “The program, featuring speakers who engage in rhetoric that demonizes the State of Israel and seeks to marginalize its supporters, has raised significant consternation among Jewish students and many others on campus and in the community, who not only care about Israel but worry about civility on campus,” stated Robert Trestan, ADL’s regional director, Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.
Arsen Ostrovsky, international human rights lawyer and leading pro-Israel advocate told Breitbart News:
“They were meant for each other, like two peas in an anti-Semitic pod, driven by their unbridled hatred, bigotry, and anti-Semitism.”
He continued: “I also find it incredibly ironic that two people, who claim to be so grounded with the ‘person on the street,’ never missing an opportunity to preach about ‘injustice’ and ‘oppression,’ chose to spread their message of hate and intolerance from the opulence of a private jet, just further underscoring how out of touch with reality both are,” Ostrovsky said.
Sarsour created a lot of fuss after a Twitter post on Nov. 15, 2018, where she said that American Jews “masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech.”
