Roger Waters
For nearly two decades, Roger Waters has been one of the most prominent and outspoken supporters of the anti-Israel BDS movement. He has refused to perform in Israel and urged fellow artists to follow suit, and has often used inflammatory rhetoric against the country and the Jewish people. PJTN has called out Waters for his hateful rhetoric which dates back to 2013 in a letter suggesting that his anti-Israel views may be colored by antisemitism.
In a recent interview with Palestinian news agency Shehab, Waters employed a range of antisemitic tropes, claiming that the U.S. is being controlled by Jewish Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, whom he describes as a “puppet master” who is “filling the coffers and pulling all the strings” on U.S. policy regarding Israel/Palestine.
In the interview, Waters also directly attacked Zionism, describing it as “an ugly stain” which “needs to be gently removed.” This sweeping language about Zionism, which exists in a variety of iterations across diverse segments of the political spectrum, is an implicit attack on millions of Jews who incorporate a connection with Israel into their religious, cultural, or social identities. (According to a Pew research report from 2017, a majority of American Jews state that they are “attached to Israel and that caring about Israel is either ‘essential’ or ‘important’ to what being Jewish means to them.)
This is not the first time Waters has used antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric. In May 2019, Waters appeared to compare Israelis to aliens in a rant about Israel hosting the 2019 Eurovision contest. That same month, he also headlined an event at the University of Massachusetts sponsored by a number of pro-BDS student organizations. At an August 2018 concert in Poland, Waters projected the phrase “resist Israeli anti-Semitism” onto the stage where he was performing.
In a 2013 interview with the left wing website Counterpunch, he suggested that some artists don’t take controversial positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict partly because “the Jewish lobby is extraordinary [sic] powerful” in the U.S. music industry. He also claimed that the “right wing rabbinate” is responsible for promoting bigotry against non-Jews among Israelis.
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The new documentary “Dark Side of Roger Waters” has revealed a new set of antisemitism allegations against former Pink Floyd bassist and frontman Roger Waters, including that he wanted to use the words “dirty kyke” on an inflatable pig, wanted to write a song that called Pink Floyd’s then-agent a “f—ing Jew” and ranted about “Jew food.” Waters has since issued a statement on his website calling the documentary “a flimsy, unapologetic piece of propaganda.”
The 37-minute documentary, which was created by Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), featured longtime journalist John Ware claiming to have obtained internal emails from Waters in 2010 when he was planning a global tour. One of the purported emails features Waters proposing that the now-infamous inflatable pig feature “stars of David” and “epithets” like “dirty kyke,” “follow the money” and “Scum?” Ultimately, Waters scrapped the “dirty kyke” epithet after objections from his lighting director, who was Jewish.
Another email shows Waters suggesting that they provide visuals dropping Stars of David and other religious symbols “like bombs,” along with “dollar signs” and “swastikas.” Waters wrote in this email, “I gather that at least one of us is offended by the inclusion of at least one of these symbols,” an apparent reference to his lighting director. The swastikas were not used in the tour, but Waters did use Stars of David followed by dollar signs.
In his Friday statement, Waters claimed that the documentary distorted the emails. “The offensive words I referenced in quotes in an email 13 years ago, were my brainstorming ideas on how to make the evils and horrors of fascism and extremism apparent and shocking to a generation that may not fully appreciate the ever-present threat,” Waters said. “They are not the manifestation of any underlying bigotry as the film suggests. Quite the opposite. I have been trying to expose the evils of fascism ever since learning of my father’s death fighting fascists in World War II.”
The documentary features a clip of Waters saying on Double Down News that the pig “has a number of symbols on it, including the crucifix and the star and crescent” and that “the Star of David is only part of a group of symbols that represent dogma.” He stopped using the Star of David on the pig in 2013.
“I think Roger sees himself as an antifascist,” legendary producer Bob Ezrin, who co-produced Pink Floyd’s 1979 album “The Wall” and has worked with other iconic artists like Alice Cooper, Kiss and Lou Reed. “I think Roger sees himself as someone who opposes racism and opposes totalitarianism and opposes stereotypes and all that stuff, he sees himself that way. And I think in his mind, that pig was symbolic of all the bad thinking people have about other people in the world, and he assimilated it into one symbol that floats over the top of audiences at his concert.” But, Ezrin argued, “nobody really understands the profound meaning that Roger will ascribe to the pig” and so when people see the Star of David on the pig, “they just see symbols of antisemitism, so for the antisemites in the audience, that’s a rallying cry.”
Ezrin, who is Jewish, alleges in the documentary that when he came to England to co-produce “The Wall,” Waters conjured up a ditty about Pink Floyd’s then-agent Brian Morrison that included an offensive line. “I can’t remember the exact circumstance, but something like, the last line of the couplet was: ‘Because Morri is a f—ing Jew,’” Ezrin said. “It was my first inclination that there may be some antisemitism under the surface.”
The documentary also interviews Norbert Statchel, a former saxophonist for Waters who alleged several instances in which Waters made antisemitic remarks. One such instance is that when Statchel was with Waters at a restaurant in Lebanon in 2002; Statchel claims that Waters was annoyed that the restaurant kept bringing out vegetarian food and the former Pink Floyd frontman eventually snapped. “That’s it! That’s it! Where’s the meat? Where’s the meat … this is Jew food!” Waters allegedly exclaimed. “What’s with the Jew food? Take away the Jew food!” Statchel recalled feeling “tongue tied” and “kind of in a panic.”
Statchel also recalled in an instance in which Waters offered to get know him. Statchel gave him family background and that his family are Ashkenazi Jews and Holocaust survivors from Minsk and Poland; Statchel described Waters as making an awkward smile while listening to his family background. Waters then asked Statchel if there are relatives on his father’s side, to which Statchel replied, “Not that I’m aware of, I think most of them were killed.”
At this point, Statchel claimed that Waters offered to “help you feel like you’re meeting your long-lost relatives. I’ll introduce you to do your dead grandmother. I can do a good Polish peasant imitation.” “He tried to go into character as a babushka,” Statchel said, “and he puts on this impression of an old hag, he makes his voice a certain way, he tries to portray a Polish Jewish peasant woman’s voice. It was kind of like a slapstick, insulting way a person of no education and low class––and maybe not real smart––would speak and talk.” After Waters was done with his impression, he then allegedly asked Statchel: “Now you’ve met your grandmother, how do you feel now?”
Asked by Ware why Waters would do this, Statchel replied: “Because he knew I wouldn’t challenge him on it because I wanted his money, and I wanted his gig.” Ware suggested that “it was a power thing,” and Statchel concurred.
Additionally, Statchel claimed that a member of Waters’ entourage who is Jewish gave Statchel some advice to keep his job: “Just shut up about the Jewish stuff. Keep it to yourself. When he says something, just go with it or politely bow out of it.” The entourage member also asked Statchel to not tell Waters that the entourage member is Jewish.
At the end of the documentary, Ware asks both Ezrin and Statchel if they think that Waters is antisemitic.
“I personally do,” Statchel said. “After these things that I heard and all these little things that I already spoke about that I experienced, what else would I call it?”
“Do I think he considers himself to be an antisemite? I’ll bet you dollars for donuts he does not, and he’ll be the first person to say, ‘I’m not anti anything, I’m in favor of everyone,’” Ezrin said. “But as a person with a powerful public platform, he has a responsibility to understand that what he does affects other people. And so he may not be one, but he walks like one, he quacks like one, he swims like one, so from my point of view he’s functionally a duck.”
Waters said in his Friday statement that the CAA reached out to him earlier in the month to respond to the allegations and gave him seven days to respond. “Initially I took the view that their attacks on my character did not deserve a response,” Waters said. “However, now that the attacks are in circulation, I want to put my response on record. All my life I have used the platform my career has given me to support causes I believe in. I passionately believe in Universal Human Rights. I have always worked to make the world a better, more just and more equitable place for all my brothers and sisters, all over the world, irrespective of their ethnicity, religion or nationality, from indigenous peoples threatened by the US oil industry to Iranian women protesting for their rights. That is why I am active in the non-violent protest movement against the Israeli government’s illegal occupation of Palestine and its egregious treatment of Palestinians. Those who wish to conflate that position with antisemitism do a great disservice to us all.”
The former Pink Floyd frontman then cited a report in The Guardian from January about how the United Kingdom’s Charity Commission is opening a compliance case against the CAA to investigate complaints that the nonprofit is, in the words of The Guardian report, “politically partisan.” Waters accused the CAA of “waging partisan political campaigns against critics of the state of Israel. So I knew their questions were not asked in good faith.”
Water acknowledged that he can be “mouthy and prone to irreverence” and couldn’t remember “what I said 13 or more years ago.” “I’ve worked closely for many years with many Jewish people, musicians and others,” he said. “If I have upset the two individuals who appear in the film I’m sorry for that. But I can say with certainty that I am not, and have never been, an antisemite – as anyone who really knows me will testify. I know the Jewish people to be a diverse, interesting, and complicated bunch, just like the rest of humanity. Many are allies in the fight for equality and justice, in Israel, Palestine and around the world.”
He also accused the documentary of misrepresenting his views on Israel and Zionism and manipulated “footage and quotations to serve its agenda.” “What it says about my latest tour, This Is Not A Drill, repeats a series of falsehoods that have already been debunked, many times, not just by me, but in the German courts, after attempts were made to have my show banned there,” Waters said, referencing the film’s highlighting of Waters’ juxtaposition of Anne Frank’s name with Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on the video screens during his shows and Waters dressing up in a Nazi-style uniform. Waters has previously defended those actions in a May statement, saying that the Nazi-style uniform is “a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms.” As for Anne Frank, Water said, “When I was a child after the war, the name of Anne Frank was often spoken in our house, she became a permanent reminder of what happens when fascism is left unchecked.”
Waters concluded his Friday statement by calling the documentary “a flimsy, unapologetic piece of propaganda that indiscriminately mixes things I’m alleged to have said or done at different times and in different contexts, in an effort to portray me as an antisemite, without any foundation in fact.”
Before Waters had issued his statement Gideon Falter, the chief executive of CAA, said in a statement on the CAA’s website, “Roger Waters has repeatedly used his enormous platform to bait Jews, but he always claims that he is not antisemitic. We believed that there was further evidence out there to the contrary, and the release of ‘The Dark Side of Roger Waters’ now puts the evidence we obtained in the hands of the public. It is hard to imagine a rockstar emblazoning the N-word above their concerts, but Mr. Waters demanded that his crew do exactly that with the K-word. Not only that, but he seems to have spent time humiliating and harassing his Jewish staff. One cannot help but watch this film and wonder what kind of person uses their power to this effect. Is Roger Waters an antisemite? Now people can make up their own minds.”