Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood: Stop Artwashing Genocide

Last Sunday night, while Israeli forces bombed displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in Rafah, Gaza – burning men, women, children and babies alive – a short drive away, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood performed a concert in apartheid Tel Aviv.

Since 2004, Palestinian society, including the absolute majority of musicians, has called for international artists to refuse to work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime. Many tens of thousands of artists have since endorsed the call.

As during apartheid in South Africa, a few artists insist on dismissing the authoritative appeals of the oppressed. Greenwood’s band Radiohead are perhaps the most notorious of the artists to have defied Palestinian calls, leaving their progressive fanbase angry and distraught.

Radiohead insisted on performing in apartheid Tel Aviv in 2017, on the ruins of Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed within living memory. The late Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, was among those urging the band to “stay away, until apartheid ends”.

Regardless of excuses, crossing the Palestinian picket line and performing in apartheid Israel during its genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza is to consciously whitewash – or artwash – Israel’s genocide and underlying 76-year-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid.

Palestinians unequivocally condemn Jonny Greenwood’s shameful artwashing of Israel’s genocide. We call for peaceful, creative pressure on his band Radiohead to convincingly distance itself from this blatant complicity in the crime of crimes, or face grassroots measures.

We call on Palestinian/Arab musicians to refuse to act as a figleaf for international artists who artwash military occupation, apartheid and genocide. To do so is to abrogate their moral duty.