Another brick in the fence

After the momentous album "The Wall" came out in 1980, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd managed to combine music with a historic event centering around a wall - or, more precisely, the destruction of one - when he appeared where the Berlin Wall once stood, just months after its dismantlement. Now he is appears as narrator and as the main figure in "Walled Horizons," a new documentary film prepared by the United Nations about the separation fence in the West Bank.

"When you stand in front of something like that," said Waters in a telephone interview to Haaretz earlier this month, in reference to the barrier, "it feels not just monumentally inhuman, but also slightly not real. It feels as though it's a projection of some kind of an illness. A sickness of our society."

Waters does not spare criticism of Israel concerning the wall and the harm it has caused to Palestinians. Among the list of similar barriers that he says he was reminded of during a tour in June along the cement wall in Abu Dis in East Jerusalem was also the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto. Many Israelis would consider that as a provocation, or see it as implying a comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. However, before the wave of accusations hit, it must be remembered that for Waters, a wall is first of all a wall, regardless of who built it, and each one resembles the other.

"These walls, wherever they are," he explained, "are always manifestation of the same thing, which is the need of one people to control another people, normally out of either a sense of inferiority or out of a sense of fear. So this wall is not different then the wall in Berlin or the wall across the street in Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 or the wall around the bleak township in South Africa. And as we know the ghetto was liberated, and as we ... the wall in Berlin was removed, and Africa is apartheid free and a democracy. But this thing doesn't happen in the Middle East. [The situation] will be a lot happier if children can go to school and to doctors - Palestinians and Israelis children. There is nothing more desolating then to lose the life of a child. Even one child is one child too many."

Asked whether, in his opinion, the day will come when the wall in Jerusalem will fall and he will do a repeat of the famous concert he gave in Berlin in 1990, Waters laughed. "It will happened. If it happens in the next few years. I'm not sure you should wait till I'm 95 years old," added the 66-year-old musician.

In the film, he says: "Those walls that separate peoples - uncles from aunts, fathers from sons, relatives from relatives, people from their work and just from the possibility to live a normal life - history tells us [those walls] never survive. And this one will never survive here."

'Absolutely insufferable'

In the film, Waters remarks are aimed not only the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also the Americans. "There is very powerful Jewish lobby in New York and Washington. It is very hard in North America to get to the truth," he says. "Most Americans have absolutely no idea of what is going on. Most U.S. citizens in the Midwest came from farmers' stock. The idea that you can be invaded and then have your land stolen from you would be absolutely insufferable to their sense of justice, but they just don't know about it because it's not getting reported in the U.S. media."

Moreover, Water has developed the impression that Israelis, too, are not familiar with the reality around them. On his recent visit here he met with students at a packed hall in the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. He and asked them whether they had seen the film "The Heart of Jenin," which tells the story of a father who donates the organs of his 12-year-old son who had been shot by soldiers. No one had even heard of it.

Waters: "I turned to the head of the film school and said: You have to organize a showing so these young people get to see some of the reality around them. Life cannot be just studying Ingmar Bergman."

Waters first got involved with the separation wall in Jerusalem and the territories in the wake of his concert in Israel in the summer of 2006. The event, which was to have taken place in Tel Aviv, was moved to a field near the mixed Arab and Jewish village of Neve Shalom in the wake of protests by Palestinian organizations. Holding the concert adjacent to this mixed community was a symbolic way for Waters to call for peace. Prior to the performance he toured the separation fence, accompanied by UN people, and since then he has been following its construction and its effect on Palestinians.

About a year ago he came back to make the film, which was produced by the UN in Jerusalem. Waters volunteered to serve as the narrator; furthermore, the soundtrack includes songs from Pink Floyd's "The Wall."

In the film, he says: "It fills me with horror, the thought of having to live in a giant prison; it literally is like living in a giant prison."

"Walled Horizons," which deals with the ways the wall affects the lives of the Palestinians, is very critical of Israel. Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yaron, formerly director general of the Defense Ministry, admits in the film that the barrier has created humanitarian problems for the Palestinians, but explains that it is a necessity in terms of security. Yaron also participates in one of the most powerful moments in the film, near the end. It is a very disturbing scene, showing Israeli authorities preventing a Palestinian family from crossing the separation barrier in Jerusalem to bring the head of the household to a hospital. Yaron appears and explains in Hebrew, in an especially loud voice, that "this entire undertaking can serve as an example. I'm not going into the problems it is causing the Palestinians, but as an engineering project, it is extraordinary."

Other Israelis interviewed in the film are Danny Tirza, the Defense Ministry official charged with building the barrier, who naturally justifies its existence, and attorney Michael Sfard and Col. (res.) Shaul Arieli, who attack the project and its ramifications vis-a-vis the lives of the Palestinians.

The separation fence in the West Bank is not Waters' only political concern. In recent years he has been devoting a considerable portion of his time to the Third World. When interviewed, he said he was just about to complete a project involving the recording a song with a group of South American singers for the benefit of a children's aid organization. Another project which will not doubt be of interest to local fans is the current adaptation of "The Wall" for Broadway.

After Pink Floyd broke up, it reunited only once, in the summer of 2005 at the Live 8 Festival in London. But Waters is certain that this will never happen again.

"Unfortunately two of us are now dead and there is no chance of reunion. And I don't think there ever will be. My impression is that David [Gilmour, the Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist] is happy in his retirement. Actually I don't own any of the name anyway [Waters lost a court case on the right to use the name Pink Floyd - N.H.], so you should ask David."