Thom Yorke answers Ken Loach over Radiohead's Tel Aviv show

Thom Yorke has answered Ken Loach in writing. Loach, the film director and one of the names on April's open letter asking the band not to play Israel, used a piece in The Independent on Tuesday 11 July to ask why Radiohead would not meet him and Palestinian artists before their show in Tel Aviv on 19 July. Yorke replied on Twitter that day with a statement posted as an image, under nothing but a praying-hands emoji.

Playing in a country, Yorke wrote, is not the same as backing whoever governs it. Radiohead have played Israel for over 20 years, through governments more and less liberal, as they have in America. We don't endorse Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America.¹ Music, art and academia are about crossing borders and dialogue, he went on, and he signed off I hope that makes it clear Ken.¹ The band first played Tel Aviv in 1993 and were last in Israel in July 2000, so the show at Park HaYarkon in Tel Aviv will be their first in Israel in 17 years.

Loach had written that he offered Radiohead's management a meeting with Palestinian artists several times over the previous three weeks and heard nothing back. He was answering Yorke's complaint to Rolling Stone in June that critics attacked the band in public instead of talking to them, which Loach called inaccurate and irrelevant. He defended the word apartheid, which Yorke had objected to. He ended on Desmond Tutu's point that there is no neutrality in the face of grave injustice, and told the band they had to decide whether they stood with the oppressed or the oppressor.

On Wednesday 12 July PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, replied to Yorke that the band were crossing a Palestinian picket line. The Jewish Chronicle reported that day that Loach's latest film, I, Daniel Blake, was showing in several Tel Aviv cinemas, though Loach says he insisted his films not be screened in Israel. Yorke drew attention to the report on Twitter on Saturday 15 July.

That Saturday Roger Waters, who disputed Yorke's account in June, spent an hour on a Facebook Live with the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and spoke to Yorke directly. I begged you, Thom. I sent you a number of emails, begging you to have a conversation. As did Brian Eno; you ignored us all, you won't speak to anyone about anything.⁷ He told the band to respect the picket line, called the idea that Yorke knows more about apartheid than Tutu ludicrous, and invited him to write after the trip and say how much good it had done.

On Sunday Michael Stipe posted on Instagram that he stands with Radiohead and their decision to perform, and hopes the dialogue continues and helps end the occupation.