Rock musician Roger Waters has said that Israeli policies towards Palestinians are comparable to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

In an interview with the left-wing American magazine, Counterpunch, the former Pink Floyd frontman was quoted as saying: "The parallels with what went on in the 30s in Germany are so crushingly obvious", adding that it was no surprise that the boycott movement was growing.

Mr Waters also described the Israeli rabbinate as "bizarre" and accused rabbis of believing that Palestinians and other Arabs in the Middle East were "sub-human".

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wisenthal Centre, described the comments as "venomous" and said that they confirmed Mr Waters’ status as “one of the most virulent haters of the Jewish state anywhere."