Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has defended his involvement in a musical project with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, and spoke out against “the silencing of Israeli artists because they were born Jewish in Israel”.
Greenwood performed with Tassa in Tel Aviv on May 26, the day after he reportedly took part in protests calling for the release of hostages being held in Gaza and for new elections.
They performed songs from “Jarak Qaribak,” a collaborative album of Arabic love songs released last year.
Greenwood’s performance was condemned by pro-Palestinian activists as “genocide artwashing”.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, called for “peaceful and creative pressure on his band, Radiohead, to credibly distance themselves from this blatant complicity in crimes or face grassroots action.”
PACBI also noted that at the same time as Greenwood’s concert, Israeli forces were bombing Palestinian refugees sheltering in tents in the Rafah district of the Gaza Strip, sparking widespread outcry on social media last week. For the past two decades, activists have called on musicians to “refuse to collaborate with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime.”
Greenwood has now responded to the criticism. In a lengthy statement posted to his social media accounts, he began: “This summer I will be playing festivals in Europe with Doudou Tassa and a Kuwaiti band. Some people are asking why.
“I have been collaborating and releasing music together since 2008, and working individually much longer before that. I think artistic projects that bring together Arab and Jewish musicians are valuable, as well as projects that remind everyone that the roots of Jewish culture in countries like Iraq and Yemen go back thousands of years.”
“But any time we call an artistic endeavor ‘important,’ it calls for a seriousness about the entire endeavor. In reality, it’s just musicians from all over the Middle East respecting each other, collaborating across borders, and sharing a love for a long catalogue of Arabic songs, whether written by Muslim, Jewish or Christian composers.”
Greenwood noted that Tassa is the grandson of one of Iraq’s most famous composers, the legendary Al-Kuwaiti brothers, whose music is still regularly broadcast on radio stations across the Arab world, but stressed that “unfortunately, their Jewish heritage is no longer spoken of.”
https://t.co/BcqpR8cOUH pic.twitter.com/TBrCbCleBS
— Jonny Greenwood (@JnnyG) June 4, 2024
He continued, “Others believe that this type of project is unjust and call for silencing this work, and all artistic endeavors by Israeli Jews. But I disagree with that call. Silencing Israeli filmmakers, musicians and dancers when their work is touring abroad, especially when it comes at the urging of fellow Western filmmakers, musicians and artists, does not strike me as progressive, as these are the very people who will always be the most progressive members of any society.”
“I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the incredible musicians I’ve met on this project. They all seem to me to be far braver and taking far more principled risks than those trying to break us up or to assume there are sinister ulterior motives behind the band’s existence. There are no ulterior motives. We are musicians who respect a common culture, and I’ve been a part of it for nearly 20 years.”
“In any case, no art is more ‘important’ than stopping the death and suffering that is happening all around us. How can that be? But doing nothing seems like a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists because they were born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like a way for both sides in this never-ending conflict to understand each other.”
Greenwood concludes: “So this is why I make music with this band. You’re welcome to disagree with or ignore what we do, but I hope you’ll understand what our true motivations are and respond to the music without suspicion or hatred.”
Greenwood’s wife, the artist Sharona Katan, is Israeli, and the couple had a nephew who served in the Israel Defense Forces but was killed in the war with Hamas.
Radiohead has performed in Israel many times throughout their career, with a particularly controversial show in 2017.
The band have faced calls to cancel the shows and Artists for Palestine UK recently published an open letter, signed by musicians including Roger Waters, Thurston Moore and Young Fathers, as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, urging the band to “reconsider” their decision amid a widespread cultural boycott of the country.
Radiohead’s Fans for Palestine also wrote an open letter to Yorke, saying: “It is the Palestinian people who are asking you to boycott them and you should appeal to them if you are going to justify playing in Tel Aviv.”
PACBI added: “Whatever the excuse, crossing a Palestinian picket line and performing in the apartheid state of Israel in the midst of the genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is a deliberate whitewashing or whitewashing of Israeli genocide and the 76-year-old settler-colonial apartheid regime that underpins it.”
Yorke also got into a Twitter spat with director Ken Loach over their Israel show, in which Loach asked the band “Are you on the side of the oppressed or the oppressors?”
Drummer Philip Selway responded that the show “felt like the right decision.” When asked by NME if the band felt like they had severed ties with the band after the show, Selway said, “I honestly don’t know. It wasn’t the basis for our decision to play here. We stand by what we said and we think it was the right decision.”
Activists also organised a protest at Glastonbury in 2017, aiming to wave 100 Palestinian flags in front of the Pyramid Stage during the performance.
Meanwhile, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien called for a ceasefire in Gaza in January: “Like all of you, the events of October 7th and its aftermath have been horrific beyond words. I feel that anything I have attempted to write is completely inadequate. Ceasefire now. Return the hostages,” he wrote on Instagram.
