Band’s singer appeared to side with Israel, denouncing the man as a ‘coward’ and storming off stage after the fan asked him how many more children in Palestine have to die at the hands of Israel.
Israel has murdered over 16,000 children in Gaza over the last 12 months using US, German and UK-made arms in civilian areas as well as using starvation and disease as a weapon, in contravention of international law.
Thom Yorke has two children of his own and is worth an estimated $45 million. Despite tweeting about the war in Ukraine, he has not expressed any sentiment towards Palestinian civilians, who are currently being liquidated by Israel in northern Gaza, after the Zionist state’s 16-year siege of the enclave.
Musicians such as Coldplay, The Weeknd and Dua Lipa have expressed solidarity with Palestine and donated proceeds from fans buying their albums and concert tickets to assist with the humanitarian crisis in the region, as Israel continues to kill medics and aid workers operating there by the hundreds, with impunity.
Heckled over Gaza
The fan who called Yorke out at the singer’s Melbourne concert last night could be heard shouting “the Israeli genocide of Gaza” and referring to a death toll of ‘200,000’, saying that “half of them were children”.
Yorke responded to him: “Come up here and say that. Right here, come on. Hop up on the f*cking stage and say what you wanna say. Don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You want to p*ss on everybody’s night?”
The protester then yelled out: “How many dead children will it take for you to condemn the genocide in Gaza?”
Yorke responded, “OK, you do it, see you later then”, and walked offstage.
Playing to Apartheid
Radiohead has played 9 shows in Israel since achieving international success in the 90s and its guitarist Johnny Greenwood recently played to IDF troops as they were operating in Gaza, amidst widespread condemnation. The ICJ and the ICC are in the midst of investigating thousands of IDF documented war crimes against Palestinian women and children over the past year.
On May 26, as Israel dropped 2,000lb bombs onto tents in Rafah filled with refugees, Greenwood played a concert in Tel Aviv.
In response to the ensuing outcry, he tweeted an ‘art-washed’ statement that dodged the issue of playing to troops in a country accused of committing genocide.
Greenwood’s statement echoed arguments previously made by frontman Thom Yorke in June 2017, when Radiohead publicly refused to respect a cultural boycott of Israel organised by the BDS movement, despite pleas from peers such as Roger Waters and Ken Loach.
Yorke claimed the boycott ‘creates divisive energy’ and that ‘it’s deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves.’
Artists against aid
Greenwood is married to Israeli artist Sharona Katan who has been posting Israeli warmongering and genocidal propaganda to her twitter account since 7 October, from debunked allegations of mass rape and beheaded babies to the smear campaign against UNWRA.
This week, Israel successfully voted to ban UNWRA – the largest responder in the humanitarian operation in Gaza – from Israel within 90 days and declare the essential UN relief agency a terror group.
In a statement, Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of UNWRA, called the vote “unprecedented” as two million Palestinians are displaced and the Gaza Strip faces widespread shortages of food, water and medicine.
“This will only deepen the suffering of Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell,” he said.
