50 years ago Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza, and a young English musician named Roger Waters started a career in music with the rock group Pink Floyd. For 50 years the Palestinians have remained prisoners in their own land, while the band played on.

Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 to pursue a solo career. It was a thorny path to choose. Twenty years later, in June of 2006, he was booked to perform in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park.

As word spread, he was approached by Palestinian civil society activists who told him about a new protest movement that they had recently launched. A movement that reached out to foreign artists asking them to protest the occupation by joining BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions). After engaging in a dialogue with the leaders of BDS, Waters was persuaded to cancel the Hayarkon Park show and moved it to Neve Shalom (Peace Village) where he played in front of some 60,000 Israelis.

Towards the end of that concert, he told the crowd, “You are the generation of young Israelis who must make peace with your neighbors.” The crowd fell silent; this was not in the script.

That was the beginning of his support for BDS. It was cemented by Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Lebanon which happened one month after his Neve Shalom concert. Since then, his support has only continued to grow. He has become one of the movement’s most vocal and outspoken devotees – a commitment which has cost him many endorsements and media appearances, but one that has also set him apart as a courageous political artist, activist, and humanist.

Waters, who is currently on tour in the U.S. promoting his latest album Is This the Life We Really Want? spoke to StepFeed via Skype from his Philadelphia hotel room. He told us his views on Palestine, Thom Yorke, BDS, and Lebanon, his tour, Trump, world politics, and love.

During the hour-long conversation we had with him, only a few minutes were spent talking about his latest album. That was when he spoke about the inspiration behind two of the songs on the album "Wait for Her," which is based on a poem by late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and the song "The Last Refugee," whose video ends on a scene that could have been pulled out from coverage of the current refugee crisis, particularly the tragic death of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, whose body was discovered on the shores of Turkey in 2015.

