Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke told the UK’s Sunday Times that he won’t play in Israel again while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in power, and that Israel should not be part of Eurovision, while also criticizing pro-Palestinian activists for prosecuting a “low-level Arthur Miller witch hunt.”
Yorke, guitarist Jonny Greenwood and other members of the band addressed Israel, and pressure to boycott it, in a wide-ranging interview published Saturday on the occasion of Radiohead’s 40th anniversary and ahead of their first tour since 2017.
It’s far from the first time the band’s members have spoken out about Israel.
Yorke wrote a lengthy social media post criticizing both the Israeli government and Hamas in May, months after storming offstage in response to a pro-Palestinian heckler.
Greenwood, whose wife is Israeli, has long collaborated with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa as well as Arab artists, and rejects boycotts of the country. He had gigs canceled this year amid pressure from the boycott movement. A concert he and Tassa played in Tel Aviv last year prompted a call from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to boycott Radiohead’s upcoming tour.
In the UK interview, which was conducted before the current ceasefire took effect, both Yorke and Greenwood took umbrage at fans’ calls for Radiohead to take a vocal position on the war in Gaza, and to pledge not to play in Israel. But the two were split over whether they would actually want to perform in the country.
“I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime, but Jonny has roots there,” said Yorke. “So I get it.”
Greenwood disagreed. “I would argue that the government is more likely to use a boycott and say, ‘Everyone hates us — we should do exactly what we want,’” Greenwood said. “Which is far more dangerous.”
(Yorke and Greenwood were interviewed together, while the other band members were interviewed separately.)
The band faces ongoing pressure over Israel and the war. In September, it announced its first shows in over seven years. The BDS Movement responded by urging fans to boycott the tour because of Radiohead’s “silence” and Greenwood’s work with Tassa.
“Even as Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza reaches its latest, most brutal and depraved phase of induced starvation, Radiohead continues with its complicit silence, while one member repeatedly crosses our picket line, performing a short drive away from a livestreamed genocide, alongside an Israeli artist that entertains genocidal Israeli forces,” an Instagram post by the movement read.
The band’s return to the stage will consist of shows in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin between November 4 and December 12. Tickets sold out quickly in September, despite the boycott call.
The interview came at a time of a growing cultural boycott against Israeli artists as well as entertainers seen as sympathetic to Israel. The boycott burgeoned during the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, launched following the Hamas October, 7, 2023 massacre, as pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests took place across the globe.
Both Yorke and Greenwood had harsh words for activists who heckle them over Israel and call on them to boycott the country. Yorke said the issue “wakes me up at night,” adding that “squabbling” with critics of Israel does nothing to ameliorate the war and suffering.
“It’s an expression of impotency,” Yorke said. Then, referring to the Arthur Miller play “The Crucible,” widely seen as an allegory for 1950s-era McCarthyism in the United States, he added, “It’s a purity test, low-level Arthur Miller witch hunt. I utterly respect the dismay but it’s very odd to be on the receiving end.”
Addressing European calls to ban Israel from the Eurovision song contest over the war, Yorke said, “I don’t think Israel should do Eurovision.” He then added, somewhat cryptically, “But I don’t think Eurovision should do Eurovision. So what do I know?”
In his social media post on the issue in May, Yorke wrote that “Netanyahu and his crew of extremists are totally out of control and need to be stopped,” and that the international community should put pressure on them to cease the war. But he added that “the unquestioning Free Palestine refrain… does not answer the simple question of why the hostages have still not all been returned.” (The post was written five months before the current ceasefire deal, under which all 20 surviving hostages, along with 15 deceased captives, have been returned to Israel.)
“Why did Hamas choose the truly horrific acts of October 7th?” Yorke continued. “The answer seems obvious, and I believe Hamas chooses too to hide behind the suffering of its people, in an equally cynical fashion for their own purposes.”
Greenwood, in the Times interview, called the entire situation “nuts.”
“The only thing that I’m ashamed of is that I’ve dragged Thom and the others into this mess — but I’m not ashamed of working with Arab and Jewish musicians. I can’t apologize for that,” he said.
He added that he had gone to anti-government protests in Israel, where he’d seen frequent invective against far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
“I spend a lot of time there with family and cannot just say, ‘I’m not making music with you f**kers because of the government,’” he said. “It makes no sense to me. I have no loyalty — or respect, obviously — to their government, but I have both for the artists born there.”
He added that the backlash is “the embodiment of the left.”
“The left looks for traitors, the right for converts and it’s depressing that we are the closest they can get.”
Drummer Philip Selway likewise told The Sunday Times that “what BDS are asking of us is impossible. They want us to distance ourselves from Jonny, but that would mean the end of the band and Jonny is coming from a very principled place. But it’s odd to be ostracized by artists we generally felt quite aligned with.”
Guitarist Ed O’Brien, who the paper said was more vocally pro-Palestinian, lamented that the band did not play in the West Bank’s Ramallah as well as Tel Aviv in 2017.
Asked about his bandmates’ statements on Israel, or lack thereof, he said, “I am not going to judge anybody.” He added, “But the brutal truth is that, while we were once all tight, we haven’t really spoken to one another much — and that’s OK.”
