Roger Waters, Desmond Tutu and more protest Radiohead's Israel performance

Pressure is building on Radiohead to cancel their July 19 gig in Tel Aviv, Israel, due to the consistent, well-documented claims of human rights abuses committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinian population.

A number of artists and activists—including Thurston Moore, TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Young Fathers, Desmond Tutu, and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters—have now signed an open letter asking Radiohead “to think again” about performing in Israel. In the letter, they write, “by playing in Israel you’ll be playing in a state where, UN rapporteurs say, ‘a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people.’” The letter closes, “Please do what artists did in South Africa’s era of oppression: stay away, until apartheid is over.” Read the full letter here.

In a separate statement attached to the letter, Thurston Moore said: “If any concerned, humanitarian-conscious activists employ a boycott to protest brutal injustice in their country and request artists and scholars to refrain from working and/or being promoted as supportive of the normalization of that country—then I choose NOT to cross that line and suggest to all to not be complicit. It is a small sacrifice in respect to those who struggle in honourable opposition to state-sponsored fascism.”

Moore is among a group of artists which includes Brian Eno and Waters who have chosen against performing in Israel due to the country’s continuing conflict with Palestine. Countless have signed the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine, vowing to “support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality,” and “to accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”