Thom Yorke walks offstage after being confronted by pro-Palestine ...

31 Oct 2024

The Independent

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Thom Yorke walks offstage after being confronted by proPalestine

British musician told the protester to ‘hop up on stage’ to make his remarks before walking off

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Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke walked offstage after being heckled by a pro-Palestine protester during a solo show in Melbourne.

Footage filmed by a member of the audience shows a man in the crowd yelling at Yorke about the “Israeli genocide of Gaza” and the death toll, half of whom he said “were children”.

Yorke could be seen standing and listening before he told the heckler to “hop up on stage” to make his remarks.

“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 then removed his guitar and briefly walked off stage.

Members of the audience could be heard booing, with another fan shouting: “Shut the f*** up, man.”

Yorke returned shortly after the incident to play Radiohead’s 1997 song “Karma Police.”

The Independent has contacted Yorke’s representative for comment.

One concert-goer, Elly Brus, told the BBC that the heckler was escorted away by security but continued to engage with people outside the venue.

The incident took place near the end of the show at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, one of two concerts being held in Melbourne as part of Yorke’s Everything tour.

Thom Yorke briefly walked offstage after being heckled by a pro-Palestine protester (Getty)

The shows feature a career-spanning setlist of solo material and songs by his bands Radiohead and The Smile.

Yorke is next scheduled to perform at the Sydney Opera House forecourt on Friday 1 November and Saturday 2 November.

Yorke and his Radiohead bandmates have come under scrutiny in the past over their decision to continue performing in Israel.

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The band’s history with the country goes back to their debut single, “Creep”, which received widespread airplay on Israeli radio stations after initially failing to make an impact elsewhere.

They played Tel Aviv in 2017, in defiance of the pro-Palestine campaign by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Both Thom Yorke and his Radiohead/The Smile bandmate Jonny Greenwood have defended their decision to continue playing in Israel (Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Responding to criticism from British director and BDS supporter Ken Loach, who wrote an op-ed for The Independent urging Radiohead to join the boycott, Yorke said: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing the government.

“We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others. As we have in America. We don’t endorse [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu any more than [Donald] Trump, but we still play in America.”

More than 43,160 people have been killed in Gaza – including thousands of women, children and infants – since Israel launched its campaign to destroy Hamas, in response to the group’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage.

Earlier this year, pro-Palestinian activists accused Yorke’s bandmate, Jonny Greenwood, of “artwashing” when he performed alongside Israeli-Arabic musician Dudu Tassa in Tel Aviv.

Jonny Greenwood has rejected calls to boycott Israel over its war on Gaza (AFP via Getty Images)

Greenwood, 52, who is married to the Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, condemned what he deemed to be “the silencing of this, or any, artistic effort made by Israel Jews” by “those who are trying to shut us down, or who are now attempting to ascribe a sinister ulterior motive to the band’s existence”.

In his statement shared on 4 June, he continued by saying that “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.”