Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood, who has collaborated musically with Dudu Tassa, has spoken out against the cultural boycott of Israel and the cancellation of their planned shows in Britain last year. In an interview with El País, Greenwood compared pulling music events to removing books from shelves and said he values work by Israeli filmmakers, writers and musicians.
Greenwood and Tassa had been due to perform in Bristol and London in June 2025, but the concerts were canceled after pressure from pro-Palestinian activists. Greenwood said he had performed with Tassa in Tel Aviv in May 2024 and again in March 2025, drawing criticism from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. He said, “I admire many Israeli films, writers and musicians, and the music I make with Dudu revives songs older than most of the countries that are fighting each other now.” He added, “There are bookstores in Madrid openly selling Amos Oz novels, and he is Israeli. To me, canceling music is like taking books off the shelves.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel said the cancellations followed “nonviolent BDS pressure.” The group accused Greenwood and Tassa of having “clear and undeniable ties to whitewashing Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” and said Tassa had repeatedly entertained “murderous Israeli forces” and had voluntarily served as a “cultural ambassador of apartheid in Israel.”
At the time the shows were called off, Greenwood wrote that the venues and crews, who were not to blame, had received enough credible threats to conclude it was unsafe to continue. He said forcing musicians not to perform and denying audiences the chance to hear them was “a straightforward method of censorship and silencing,” and argued that intimidating venues into canceling would not help bring “the peace and justice that everyone living in the Middle East deserves.” The dispute is the latest chapter in Radiohead’s fraught relationship with the Israel boycott campaign. The band played Tel Aviv in 2017 despite pressure from figures including Roger Waters and Desmond Tutu, and Thom Yorke later said in October 2024 that Radiohead would “absolutely not” return to Israel, saying he would not want to be “within 5,000 miles of the Netanyahu regime.”
