Thom Yorke walks off after a Gaza heckle in Melbourne

Thom Yorke walked off stage after a man in the crowd shouted at him to condemn Israel's war in Gaza, near the end of his second night at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne on Wednesday 30 October. He came back a few minutes later to cheers and closed the night with “Karma Police”.

The man shouted about what he called the Israeli genocide in Gaza and its dead, half of them, he said, children. Yorke, holding an acoustic guitar, told him to come up on stage. Don't stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You want to piss on everybody's night?⁸

The man shouted again, asking how many dead children it would take for Yorke to condemn the genocide in Gaza. Yorke said see you later⁸, put his guitar down and left.

Radiohead were criticised for playing Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park in July 2017, and Yorke answered then that playing in a country is not the same as endorsing its government. In May this year the BDS campaign accused Jonny Greenwood of “artwashing” for playing Tel Aviv with the Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, and he answered in a statement.

Parts of the crowd booed the heckler. Elly Brus, who was at the show, told the BBC that security led him out, that he carried on arguing with people outside the venue, and that nobody in the crowd had taken his side. One fan on the grass told NME that the general-admission crowd there had cheered for Yorke to come back, and that he went out of his way to thank them afterwards.