Thom Yorke makes rare statement clarifying his stance on Palestine
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has released a rare and long-awaited statement about his stance on Palestine, during which he slammed “social media witch-hunts”.
The lengthy statement was posted on Instagram. It opens with a reference to “some guy” who heckled him at a show in Melbourne in 2024, demanding he comment on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. At the time, Yorke only replied, “Don’t stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You wanna piss on everybody’s night?”
Yorke then left the stage. After a pause, he did eventually reappear for an encore of ‘Karma Police’, making no further mention of the incident.
In light of that event, Yorke confesses that fans considering his recent silence on the matter “as complicity” has had a “heavy toll on [his] mental health”. He writes that his silence was a means of showing respect for all those who have died and suffered, an attempt not to “trivialise” the conflict in a few words.
His statement goes on to stress that, through his work, “it would be self-evident that I could not possibly support any form of extremism or dehumanisation of others.” He positions his life’s work completely oppositional to this, claiming his art only ever attempts to “create work that goes beyond what it means to be controlled, coerced, threatened, to suffer, to be intimidated… and instead to encourage critical thinking beyond borders, the commonality of love and experience and free creative expression.”
He then comments explicitly on the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and “his crew of extremists,” who are “totally out of control and need to be stopped, and the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease.” They have, he writes, “a transparent desire to take control of Gaza and the West Bank permanently.”
He continues, writing that the “ultra-nationalist agenda” has terrible consequences, such as “the horrific blockade of aid to Gaza.” Turning to October 7th, Yorke questions, “Why did Hamas choose the truly horrific acts of October 7th? The answer seems obvious, and I believe Hamas chooses to hide behind the suffering of its people, in an equally cynical fashion for their own purposes.”
He advocates for the release of all hostages, while noting that “the unquestioning Free Palestine refrain does not answer the simple question of why the hostages have still not all been returned.”
He then addresses “social media witch-hunts,” which include pressuring public figures to make statements, “do very little except heighten the tension, fear and oversimplication of what are complex problems.” Yorke says it leads to a “deliberate polarization [which] does not serve our fellow human beings and perpetuates a constant ‘us and them’ mentality.”
Yorke speaks of digital solidarity as “shouting from the darkness,” though the musician struggles openly to offer a solution. He writes, “I do know in communities around the globe this subject is now dangerously toxic, and we are in uncharted waters. We need to turn back.”
In his statement, Yorke does not address bandmate of both Radiohead and The Smile, Jonny Greenwood, who is married to the vocally pro-IDF Israeli artist Sharona Katan, and has collaborated with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa a few times over the years. Greenwood had several shows cancelled due to a 2024 show in Tel Aviv, in which Tassa allegedly “repeatedly entertained genocidal Israeli forces in between these massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, willingly acting as a cultural ambassador for apartheid Israel.”
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