Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood Refuses to Boycott Israel

Jonny Greenwood, the legendary lead guitarist of the British rock group Radiohead, issued a statement Tuesday explaining why he continues to work with Israeli artists and criticizing anti-Israel boycotts of Israeli arts and culture.

In his statement, Greenwood says:

I can’t join that call: the silencing of Israeli film makers / musicians / dancers when their work tours abroad – especially when it’s at the urging of their fellow western film makers/musicians/artists feels unprogressive to me. Not least because it’s these people that are invariably the most progressive members of any society.

I’m grateful to be working the remarkable musicians I’ve met during this project, all of whom strike me as much braver – and taking far more of a principled risk than those who are trying to shut us down, or who are now attempting to ascribe a sinister ulterior motivation to the band’s existence. There isn’t one: we are musicians honouring a shared culture, and I’ve been involved in this for nearly 20 years now.

Anyway, no art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us. How can it be? But doing nothing seems a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like any way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this apparently endless conflict.

As Stereogum noted, Greenwood is performing on tour with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, and is married to an Israeli. Radiohead has performed in Israel many times, and recently played with Tassa in Tel Aviv. Greenwood has been seen at anti-government demonstrations in Israel — which are not demonstrations against the war, but against Netanyahu.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.