“The statements are defamatory of the claimant at common law”: Documentary maker’s action against Roger Waters will now proceed to trial

Dear oh dear. A high court judge has found that Roger Waters was guilty of defamation when he called the director of the documentary The Dark Side Of Roger Waters, a “lying, conniving Zionist mouthpiece” and said that he was “cheerleading the genocide of Palestinians.”

Waters made those remarks in an interview he gave on Al Jazeera. He was being asked about the documentary made by investigate journalist John Ware that delves into the allegations of anti-semitism against him that have gathered momentum over these last few years. Waters, as you can imagine, was not happy. Indeed he’s called Ware’s project “a flimsy unapologetic piece of propaganda.”

In the London high court though Justice Jennifer Eady ruled that Waters was making a statement of fact rather than offering an opinion about the conduct of Israeli forces in Gaza. “The statements are defamatory of the claimant at common law,” Eady 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 the actions 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.”

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It means that Ware’s defamation action will now advance towards trial. It also means more publicity for his documentary – surely not Waters’ desired outcome. The Dark Side Of Roger Waters looks deeper at the anti-semitism claims and features interviews with Norbert Stachel, the Pink Floyd man’s saxophone player and Bob Ezrin, producer of The Wall.

Waters has said 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.”

He has always claimed that his criticisms are directed at the State of Israel rather than Judaism as a whole. Arguably though, he hasn’t done himself many favours with comments like the ones he made after 7 October 2023, when he said that the Hamas operation, which killed 1,400 Israelis that day, was “thrown out of all proportion” and speculated that it could have been a “false flag operation.”

Infamously, that same year ex-bandmate David Gilmour and his wife Polly Samson made their feelings plain about Waters’ views. She tweeted that he was “anti-semitic to (his) rotten core.”

And if that wasn’t enough, she added he was: “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Gilmour backed his wife up, adding that “every word [is] demonstrably true.”