The Pink Floyd frontman is set to perform on Wednesday’s “Stand Up for Heroes,” an annual fundraiser put on by the Bob Woodruff Foundation to support wounded veterans. Waters will join a number of other celebrity guests, including Bruce Springsteen, Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld and Daily Show host Jon Stewart.
“I feel a great sense of empathy for the people that live on the sharp end of conflicts and the ones that actually get injured,” Waters said at Monday’s rehearsal. “I get so much more out of it than I put into it.”
Roger Waters knows well the effects war can have on veterans and their families. He lost his father in World War II and his grandfather in World War I, and has written often about victims of conflict in his writing.
Waters said he wants to do whatever he can to help the often forgotten victims of war.
“I’m not a U.S. citizen, but I pay taxes here, and I wish a far greater percent of my tax dollars went to look after these guys,” Waters said.
While he has been steadfast in his support of veterans, Roger Waters has also generated controversy for his views on conflicts in Israel. Earlier this year he called for a boycott of Israel, leading many to accuse him of antisemitism.
Abraham Cooper, official Rabbi of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called Waters an “open hater of Jews” and called on others in the entertainment industry to “denounce his anti-Semitism and bigotry.”
Waters responded in an open letter to the Wiesenthal Center, which read, in part:
“I also use the Crucifix, the Crescent and Star, the Hammer and Sickle, the Shell Oil Logo and The McDonald’s Sign, a Dollar Sign and a Mercedes sign (in the show)…”
“In a functioning theocracy it is almost inevitable that the symbol of the religion becomes confused with the symbol of the state, in this case the State of Israel, a state that operates Apartheid both within its own borders and also in the territories it has occupied and colonized (sic) since 1967.”
Roger Waters also played at last year’s “Stand Up for Heroes” benefit, joining 14 wounded veterans on stage for a performance of the Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here.”
