Roger Waters Takes Neil Young and Scarlett Johanssen To Task Over Ties With Israel

Never one for avoiding controversy, Roger Waters, a previously outspoken critic of Israel, has taken to Facebook to express his disappointment of artists continuing to play and be involved in the country. Waters focused on Neil Young and Hollywood superstar Scarlett Johansson saying he has written to them personally.

Neil Young is set to play a concert in Israel in July while Johansson has recently chosen to appear in an advert for SodaStream, a company who have links with the West Bank region of Palestine, a move that has forced the star to quit as an ambassador for the charity Oxfam.

Waters wrote:

“Neil? I shall ponder all of this long and hard. We don't really know each other, but, you were always one of my heroes, I am confused.

"Scarlett? Ah, Scarlett. I met Scarlett a year or so ago, I think it was at a Cream reunion concert at MSG. She was… a young woman of strength and integrity who believed in truth, human rights, and the law and love. I confess I was somewhat smitten. There's no fool like an old fool. A few years down the line, Scarlett's choice of Soda Stream over Oxfam is such an act of intellectual, political, and civil about face, that we, all those of us who care about the downtrodden, the oppressed, the occupied, the second class, will find it hard to rationalize”

This all follows Waters’ contentious remarks last year in which he compared the modern Israeli State’s treatment of the Palestine situation to Nazi Germany.