Roger Waters has never shied away from politics or controversy especially with his latest statements.
Waters says he will rebuild his The Wall stageshow for a one-off mega-gig in Israel if the government officials there attempt to work towards as he says “equality” and “genuine democracy”.
Waters, who has been a longtime critic of Israeli policies in the ongoing war with Palestine, has started imploring acts scheduled to perform in the country to scrap the shows as a form of protest, but he has stunned fans by telling Rolling Stone magazine he’d stage one of his The Wall shows there if he felt change was coming.
“If Israel works toward equality and actual, real, genuine democracy, with no apartheid or racism infecting the society, then I will go over there and play The Wall again. I have the bits and pieces of the stage stored, and the ones I haven’t got stored, I will rebuild.”
Waters, who according to Rolling Stone has performed his The Wall show 219 times between 2010 and 2013, has come under fire from many Jewish scholars and anti-defamation groups, who insist he’s an anti-Semite for constantly firing off attacks on Israel. He insists he’s not attacking Jews, merely Israeli politics.
“The analogy is with the civil-rights struggle in the Southern states of the Unites States and pre-(Nelson) Mandela South Africa. The global civil society… feels the same way that I do about the Israeli government. I’s not the Israeli people, it’s not the Jews, it’s not Judaism. I would never dream of attacking them.”
