Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke paused a solo concert in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday after an audience member shouted for the musician to “condemn the Israeli genocide of Gaza,” while asking: “How many dead children will it take?”
Yorke addressed the person directly before leaving the stage. “Don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it,” he said. “You want to piss on everybody’s night? OK, you do it, see you later.” He made a swift exit as others in the crowd at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl allegedly booed, per BBC. Yorke returned to the stage to close his set with a solo rendition of the Radiohead single “Karma Police.” The audience member was ultimately removed from the venue.
Yorke and other members of Radiohead, including guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood, have received criticism over the past seven years for performing in Israel. In 2017, the band’s Tel Aviv concert was met with protests and an open letter signed by artists, actors, authors, and more. “In asking you not to perform in Israel, Palestinians have appealed to you to take one small step to help pressure Israel to end its violation of basic rights and international law,” the letter read.
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Yorke responded in an interview with Rolling Stone, stating: “Part of me wants to say nothing because anything I say cooks up a fire from embers. But at the same time, if you want me to be honest, yeah, it’s really upsetting that artists I respect think we are not capable of making a moral decision ourselves after all these years. They talk down to us and I just find it mind-boggling that they think they have the right to do that.”
Per Reuters, Palestinian authorities have reported that more than 43,000 Palestinians, primarily women and children, have been killed in ongoing attacks from Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out an attack at an Israeli music festival that killed 1,200 civilians and soldiers. Since then, in Israel, more than 1,200 people have been killed in the ongoing war, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
