UPDATE 09.03.2017 From Israeli Citizens: Radiohead, Please Don’t Play Tel-Aviv
Open letter from Israeli citizens to Radiohead : “We urge you to cancel your performances in Israel and not grant your seal of approval to Israel’s ongoing crimes and human rights violations.” 09.03.2017

London, 7 March 2017

Calls mount for Radiohead to cancel Israel gig 

• Artists for Palestine UK joins growing appeal to Radiohead to cancel Israel gig
• Palestinian artists say, ‘Stand with the oppressed,  as Brian Eno, Alice Walker and Roger Waters do’
• Jewish Voice for Peace in South Florida, USA, says, ‘We urge you to cancel, as an inspiration to young people everywhere’

Artists for Palestine UK (APUK), whose Artists’ Pledge for Palestine has over 1200 signatories, called today for UK band Radiohead to cancel their concert in Tel Aviv, scheduled for July 19.

APUK said:

“We are dismayed that Radiohead have decided to perform in Israel this summer.   Their gig will be at Hayarkon Park, built on the site of a Palestinian village ethnically cleansed by the Israeli army in 1948.

Singer Thom Yorke once talked about the conflict he felt between being ‘incredibly angry’ at the state of the world ‘and being so tired you just want to give up’.

But even if his band now want to take the second option, his fans do not. Protests against Radiohead’s appearance in a state which each week announces more seizures of Palestinian land are already growing.

Artists for Palestine UK will join them: Radiohead must not entertain Apartheid in Israel.

We remind the band: no one now regrets boycotting Apartheid South Africa.”

On Sunday the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) published an Open Letter to Radiohead from Palestinian artists and cultural institutions, urging the band to ‘respect the cultural boycott picket line’.

And in the USA, the South Florida chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace got over 600 signatures in just a few hours for their petition to Radiohead.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. The Artists’ Pledge for Palestine was launched in January 2015 with 700 signatures: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/13/cultural-boycott-israel-starts-tomorrow, and since then has gathered more than 500 more: https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/introduction/a-pledge/
2. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was launched in 2004 by Palestinian academics and intellectuals, and is supported by large numbers of Palestinian civil society organisations. https://bdsmovement.net/pacbi
3. Jewish Voice for Peace: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/