BDS Activists, Including Roger Waters, Urge Radiohead to Cancel Upcoming Israel Concert
by JNS.org
JNS.org – A group of musicians and anti-Israel BDS movement activists, including former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have written an open letter to the British rock band Radiohead urging the group to cancel its upcoming summer performance in Israel.
“We understand you’ve been approached already by Palestinian campaigners. They’ve asked you to respect their call for a cultural boycott of Israel, and you’ve turned them down,” the BDS activists wrote.
“By playing in Israel you’ll be playing in a state where, U.N. rapporteurs say, ‘A system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people’…Please do what artists did in South Africa’s era of oppression: stay away, until apartheid is over,” they wrote.
The letter was issued on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and appeared on a website dubbed “Artists for Palestine U.K.”
Radiohead has previously played three shows in Tel Aviv, prior to becoming a world-famous rock band. Their upcoming July 19 performance at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv will be opened by Dudu Tassa and The Kuwaitis, a Jewish-Arab band.
The Radiohead concert is one of several major musical performances that will take place in Israel this summer, with other shows by Britney Spears, Rod Stewart and Aerosmith.