“The statements are defamatory of the claimant at common law”: Roger Waters to defend libel case at trial
Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters is facing a High Court libel case following accusations towards BBC journalist John Ware, in which he claimed Ware was “cheerleading the genocide” of Palestinians.
READ MORE: Eric Clapton says that he and Roger Waters are “brothers” and that his political statements require “a lot of guts”
Waters further referred to Ware as a “pro-Zionist, pro-genocider” and accused him of being a “lying, conniving Zionist mouthpiece.” In response to his comments, which were made on Al-Jazeera’s The Stream, Ware sued Waters for libel. Al-Jazeera is also named as a defendant in the case for publicising the comments (via MusicRadar).
Waters was responding to a documentary created by Ware, called The Dark Side of Roger Waters, which investigates allegations of anti-semitism against Waters. Waters referred to said documentary as a “flimsy, unapologetic piece of propaganda.” He also mentions that the documentary “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 anti-semite, without any foundation in fact.”
The Dark Side of Roger Waters highlights an allegation that Waters used the trademark Pink Floyd inflatable pig modified with the addition of a star of David during a Roger Waters Band show in 2013. It is also alleged that Waters emailed ideas to adorn the pigs with slogans such as “follow the money” and “scum.” Waters has since claimed these words were him “brainstorming ideas on how to make the evils and horrors of fascism and extremism apparent.” (via The Jewish Chronicle)
On Tuesday 25 February 2025, a judge found that Waters’ claims were a statement of fact, not opinion. She wrote, “Although I would accept that the first defendant’s reference to a ‘genocide’ expressed his opinion as to what was happening as a result of Israeli forces in Gaza (to which he had already referred), in stating that the claimant positively supported that ‘genocide’, I find he was making a statement of fact.” (via Judiciary.uk)
Both parties agreed that the comments were “defamatory of the claimant at common law.” Waters will now need to prove that his remarks were substantially true, or that publicising them was in the public interest.
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