Roger Waters’ blatant antisemitism exposed in new documentary

Evidence revealed includes an email suggesting to write ‘dirty kike’ on a huge inflatable pig used in many of his performances.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Roger Waters’ explicit antisemitism has been exposed in a new documentary by a watchdog group which has uncovered emails to staff and comments to colleagues made by the aging British rockstar.

While he has called those accusing him of antisemitism “insane,” Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) premiered on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday “The Dark Side of Roger Waters,” a 37-minute movie that indicates a longstanding antipathy to Jews.

Bob Ezrin, a music producer who worked with the Pink Floyd frontman on one of the group’s most famous albums, “The Wall,” in the late 1970s, claimed that Waters had written a ditty about the band’s agent that called him a “f***ing Jew.”

“It was my first inclination that there may be some antisemitism under the surface,” he said.

Forty years later the same kind of sentiments were still being expressed. In one 2010 email to staff, the popular performer suggested writing on a huge inflatable pig that has flown over many of his performances the words “dirty kike” and “follow the money,” and covering it with symbols such as stars of David and dollar signs, as well as others unrelated to antisemitic memes.

Similarly, in another alleged email, he proposed “bombing” audiences with confetti shaped like swastikas, Stars of David, and dollar signs.

His former saxophonist, Norbert Statchel, ate with him once in restaurant, and told the interviewer that when the performer received a vegan-friendly plate, he pushed it away, exclaiming, “That’s it! This is Jew food! What’s with the Jew food?”

More personally offensive, when the singer learned that several of the Jewish Statchel’s relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust, he made fun of it.

“He tried to go into character as a babushka and he puts on this impression of an old hag. He tries to portray a Polish Jewish peasant woman’s voice,” Satchel said. “What got me is after he does this he goes: ‘Now you’ve met your grandmother, how do you feel now?’

Today, at age 80, Waters is still performing to huge crowds, and is still courting controversy over his attitude to both Jews and Israel. He is at the forefront of the BDS campaign against the Jewish state, which he has compared to Nazi Germany.

In a June show in Berlin, he caused an uproar after equating famed Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s death with that of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist accidentally killed by the IDF earlier in the year during a counter-terror operation.

“Roger Waters has repeatedly used his enormous platform to bait Jews, but he always claims that he is not antisemitic,” CAA head Gideon Falter said in a statement accompanying the release of the short film. Once the charity, whose mission is to expose and counter antisemitism through education and law enforcement, found evidence to the contrary, he said, it wanted to put it “in the hands of the public” so people could judge for themselves.

“He’s got this platform which allows him to influence tens of thousands of people at his concerts, millions of people via social media, and yet he keeps using it for this — to push the buttons of Jews, to bait Jews, to keep on coming back to Jews,” he said. “What kind of a person does that with that kind of a voice?”

AntisemitismBDSRoger Waters