Musicians Brian Eno and Roger Waters have launched an extraordinary defence of director Ken Loach, controversial academic David Miller and other hard-left figures, claiming they were the victims of “made up” charges of antisemitism created by Israel.

The Pink Floyd star branded the concerns of the British Jewish community over antisemitism a “smear sword that was wielded at the behest of the Israeli government”.

And record producer Mr Eno insisted that charges of antisemitism aimed at the left were “worthless” and designed to silence those who “question what is happening in Palestine”.

The tirades came during the monthly on-line talk show, Let’s Talk It Over, during a discussion called ‘Israeli Apartheid’.

Speaking during the programme, Mr Eno leapt to defend three of the most high-profile names accused of antisemitic views in recent years.

He said: “When you see people like Ken Loach, David Miller, Jackie Walker, when you see those people being accused of antisemitism, you cannot help but say this is all made up.”

Bristol University professor David Miller prompted a barrage of complaints after calling for the “end of Zionism”, while Mr Loach has provoked outrage by downplaying and denying claims of antisemitism within Labour.

Mr Loach was at the centre of a storm last month when students at Oxford University, where he was invited to speak, complained about his “history of blatant antisemitism”.

Jackie Walker, the former vice chairman of the hard left Momentum movement, was expelled from the Labour party in 2019 after she criticised Holocaust Memorial Day for only commemorating Jewish victims during an antisemitism awareness training course.

Mr Eno insisted the “random spraying around” of the charge of antisemitism “removes any power that it has and removes any sanctioning power that it has.

“It suddenly makes that charge worthless,” he said. “It’s crying wolf, so you have to think why are these attacks being particularly directed at people on the left?

“We know there are a lot of antisemites in the world, and we know that generally they’d don’t come from the left of the political spectrum. Why aren’t they being attacked?

“We are being called the enemy for some other reason than antisemitism, and of course it is transparently clear that we are being called the enemy because we question what is happening in Palestine.

“That is all you have to do to be called antisemitic.”

The Let’s Talk It Over programme is hosted by French film maker and author Frank Barat, the former coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which declared Israel an apartheid state.

The Pink Floyd star said: “The antisemitism smear sword that was wielded at the behest of the Israeli government, specifically aimed at Jeremy Corbyn because he was left wing and he might turn into a political leader on the left in the United Kingdom who would actually stand up for human rights in general but specifically the rights of working people to represent themselves and have unions.”

Both Mr Eno and Mr Waters support of the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions movement, signing an ‘Artists for Palestine’ letter in 2018 that urged musicians not to perform in Israel.

Among those who cancelled planned tour dates as a result of pressure from the BDS movement were Elvis Costello and Lauryn Hill.

Hitting back at the time, rock singer Nick Cave defended his 2018 tour of Israel as a “principled stand” against people trying to “bully” and “censor” musicians.