Radiohead Israel Performance Protested by Thurston Moore, Roger Waters, Desmond Tutu, More

On July 19, Radiohead are set to perform at Park HaYarkon in Tel Aviv, Israel. A number of artists and activists—including Thurston Moore, TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Young Fathers, Desmond Tutu, and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters—have now signed an open letter asking Radiohead “to think again” about performing in Israel. In the letter, they write, “by playing in Israel you’ll be playing in a state where, UN rapporteurs say, ‘a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people.’” The letter closes, “Please do what artists did in South Africa’s era of oppression: stay away, until apartheid is over.” Read it in full here at the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine’s site. Pitchfork has reached out to Radiohead’s representatives for comment.

In a separate statement attached to the letter, Thurston Moore said: “If any concerned, humanitarian-conscious activists employ a boycott to protest brutal injustice in their country and request artists and scholars to refrain from working and/or being promoted as supportive of the normalization of that country—then I choose NOT to cross that line and suggest to all to not be complicit. It is a small sacrifice in respect to those who struggle in honourable opposition to state-sponsored fascism.”

Moore is among the artists (also including Brian Eno and Waters) who have chosen against performing in Israel due to the country’s continuing conflict with Palestine. Countless have signed the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine, vowing to “support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality,” and “to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.” Others have joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS)–a campaign aimed against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

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