The same year, in an interview in CounterPunch, Waters compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany, saying: "The parallels with what went on in the 1930s in Germany are so crushingly obvious." He said the reason why few celebrities had joined the BDS movement in the United States was because "the Jewish lobby is extraordinary powerful here and particularly in the industry that I work in, the music industry". Following the remarks, the Anti-Defamation League charged that Waters's remarks were antisemitic. The American rabbi Shmuley Boteach responded to Waters in the New York Observer: "That you would have the audacity to compare Jews to monsters who murdered them shows you have no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul." Speaking in New York afterwards, Waters said supporters of Israel often attack critics as antisemitic as a "diversionary tactic" by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
The same year, in an interview in CounterPunch, Waters compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany, saying: "The parallels with what went on in the 1930s in Germany are so crushingly obvious." He said the reason why few celebrities had joined the BDS movement in the United States was because "the Jewish lobby is extraordinary powerful here and particularly in the industry that I work in, the music industry". Following the remarks, the Anti-Defamation League charged that Waters's remarks were antisemitic The American rabbi Shmuley Boteach responded to Waters in the New York Observer: "That you would have the audacity to compare Jews to monsters who murdered them shows you have no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul." Speaking in New York afterwards, Waters said supporters of Israel often attack critics a.s antisemitic as a "diversionary tactic" by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.