Every time we turn around, Roger Waters, the outspoken musician and sometime member of the band Pink Floyd, keeps proving to be worse than we thought he was. On this site, we’ve written at length about his self-righteous efforts to shame other performers into canceling gigs in Israel. In an open letter to Bon Jovi, for instance, he accused the fellow rocker of standing shoulder to shoulder with baby-burners and child killers and, hence, of committing “the greatest crime of all.” In another piece, Waters accused singer Robbie Williams of “showing a chilling indifference” to the welfare of Palestinian children, who, he claimed, are viewed by Israel as nothing more than “grass to be mowed.” In yet another missive, he told chanteuse Dionne Warwick that she was ignorant of Israeli history.
Waters has gotten some pushback. In a piece for the Times of Israel, filmmaker Mark Blacknell asked why, if Waters is so concerned about the Palestinians, he doesn’t criticize Arab governments for failing to welcome Palestinians into their countries. He further noted a poll in which seventy percent of Israeli Arabs said they’d rather remain Israelis than become citizens of a fully independent Palestine. Blacknell, who had made a documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, pointed out that while Israelis consistently said they didn’t Arabs, Palestinians made it clear that they despised Israelis. If only the terrorist groups in the Levant dropped their plans to push the Jews into the sea, noted Blacknell, the problem of peace in the Holy Land would be solved. “What is presented to you as innocent victims struggling for freedom,” Blacknell told Waters, “is in reality uncompromising cultural intolerance at a level so antiquated that is difficult for many westerners to comprehend.”
“In Waters’ world,” commented Israeli writer Lilac Sigan, “there is no Hamas, and this terror organization doesn’t live by its sword, doesn’t swear to death and violence, and doesn’t rule the Gaza strip with primitive Shariya law.” As we’ve pointed out, this wasn’t exactly true: Waters knows all about Hamas – and proudly stood up for them in a 2012 U.N. speech. His Jew-hatred is real. He’s a chilling, reprehensible piece of work.
And here’s a new wrinkle. During the last few years the media have covered the multiparty effort, fronted by a New York attorney, Steven Donziger, to extort billions of dollars from Chevron. This flimflam, in which several people invested substantial sums in hopes of making millions, has come to be known as the “Chevron Shakedown.” The case is now closed; Donziger has been disbarred. But during the investigators’ mop-up, the names of some of the people who invested in Dongizer’s scheme came to light. One of them was Roger Waters.
Waters, as it happens, has publicly accused Chevron of “greed,” just as he’s charged Israel with child-killing. Consistently, as with his attacks on Israel, he acts as if he’s the voice of morality, occupying the high moral ground. But when you publicly accuse a company of greed even as you privately invest in a sleazy shakedown scheme aimed at fleecing that same firm, there’s nothing remotely high-minded about it. On the contrary, it’s duplicitous and sleazy, period. But knowing what we already knew about Roger Waters, we shouldn’t be surprised by his involvement in this sordid scam.
