The artist-activist Roger Waters has responded sharply to the editors of Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper who published an interview by Alon Hadar with the co-founder of the music group “Pink Floyd” on September 28. Waters said that the article was “littered with misinformation” and amounted to a “serious distortion of the actual interview” that he gave in Amsterdam in early September.

Waters, in a letter to his Israeli fans that was released via social media, states that the editors of Yedioth Ahronoth did not misquote him, but they altered the questions that Waters was asked, making the exchange appear to have been “a combative, ill-natured, dog-fight.” Waters said that the editors of the newspaper were engaging in “shoddy journalism” as they held up “to be real, what is in fact, a fabrication.” Waters has provided an English Translation of the interview that was transcribed from a video of the event.

Waters said that the editors with all their “distortions and untruths…(appear to) want to maintain the status quo, alienate me from my fans in Israel and retreat from any consideration of the position that all the peoples of the region deserve to live in peace and justice with equal rights for all under the same laws, irrespective of color, race or religion.”

Waters agreed to the interview in an effort to reach out to his Israeli fans to explain his strong opposition to the half-century illegal occupation of Palestine, the militarized quarantining of Gaza and Israel’s unfair treatment of its Arab citizens. Waters had hoped that the interview could help him explain his “position on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), to break down Walls, and shed light on possible misunderstandings and our shared predicament.” Waters is a strong supporter of the growing boycott and divestment movement protesting Israel’s policies towards Palestinians.