Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters says the world doesn’t really know “what actually happened” when Hamas unleashed their unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, but he’s not convinced it wasn’t a “false flag operation.”
Speaking to journalist Glenn Greenwald in a recent interview, Waters appeared to cast doubt on the civilian death toll and Hamas’ role in the massacre, first saying there’s “something very fishy” about the Israeli military being so caught off guard and then claiming “we don’t know what [Hamas] did do” during the invasion.
“If war crimes were committed, I condemn them,” he said, claiming the massacre “was thrown out of all proportion by the Israelis making up stories about beheading babies.”
He was referring to reports that emerged days after the attack as the Israeli military entered communities ravaged by Hamas, where reporters cited unnamed soldiers to report that “beheaded babies” had been found in some homes. That claim was later walked back before being confirmed by a spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though the military declined to corroborate it. Netanyahu did, however, share graphic photos of what appeared to be the burned remains of babies.
Asked repeatedly to comment on the slaughter of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, Waters danced around the question by claiming there is no way to know what really happened—while also muttering that “there may have been individual” cases of civilians killed.
But he preferred to place the blame on Israel.
“Was it justified for them to resist the occupation? Yeah. But again, it’s what you said, it’s the Geneva Conventions. They are absolutely, legally and morally bound to resist the occupation since 1967. It’s an obligation,” Waters said.
Asked if there was evidence that Hamas had in fact committed war crimes, Waters cited an article from The Grayzone—notorious for pushing pro-Russian propaganda and playing down atrocities—to claim that “probably the first 400 [killed] were Israeli military personnel,” meaning it was “not a war crime.”
He made no mention of the more than 260 party-goers who were butchered at the site of a music festival in the early moments of Hamas’ sneak attack. Family members of those killed and survivors have spoken out extensively about the horrors of that massacre, and footage from the scene showed the scale of the carnage.
Waters, however, was apparently not swayed.
“What we do know is, whether it was a false flag operation or not, or whatever, or whatever happened, and whatever story we’re going to get to … and we don’t know if we’re ever going to get much of the real story. It’s very, it’s always hard to tell what actually happened,” he said.
The former Pink Floyd frontman previously courted controversy by blaming Ukraine for Russia’s full-scale invasion and parroting Kremlin propaganda during a speech to the United Nations—at the invitation of Moscow.
