Roger Waters urges Radiohead to axe Israel gig
Roger Waters is among 47 high-profile celebrities urging Radiohead to cancel their planned performance in Israel.
The ‘Creep’ hitmakers are set to perform at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv on July 19, but the 73-year-old Pink Floyd legend, along with directors Ken Loach and Peter Kosminsky and actresses Maxine Peake and Juliet Stephenson and many more, have signed a letter with Artists for Palestine UK in the hope the alternative rock band will reconsider the concert and join the on-going cultural boycott by not going ahead with the show in a country "where a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestine people".
According to The Guardian newspaper, the letter reads: "I’m 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. Since Radiohead campaigns for freedom to the Tibetans, we’re wondering why you’d turn down a request to stand up for another people under foreign occupation.
"Surely if making a stand against the politics of division, of discrimination and of hate means anything at all, it means standing against it everywhere – and that has to include what happens to Palestinians every day."
While Waters – is getting ready to release his first album for 25 years, ‘Is This the Life We Really Want?’ – didn’t personally comment on the situation, ‘I, Daniel Blake’ director Loach said the band should pull the gig out of "their own self-respect".
The group’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood – who is joined by Thom Yorke, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’ Brien and Philip Selway in the band – has links to Israel as he is married to Israeli artist Sharon Katan.
Prior to this, in 2015 a petition was started calling on a boycott of the country until the "colonial oppression of Palestinians" was over.
Radiohead are not the only band to have been told by Waters that they shouldn’t perform in Tel Aviv.
Last November, the ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ hitmaker signed another open letter to stop Chemical Brothers performing along with 7,000 others.
