Two UK concerts by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Israeli Dudu Tassa have been cancelled.
The pair have collaborated for more than a decade including on concerts in Tel Aviv that went head despite drawing the ire of the movement for a to cultural boycott the Jewish state.
But both the June gig at the Beacon in Bristol and London’s Hackney Church have now been cancelled. Neither venue or the artists have commented publicly.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel tweeted that the first cancellation that the event would have whitewashed the “genocide” of Gaza and the “underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime”.
Greenwood wrote last year amid controversy over the pair’s Israel dates: “I’ve been collaborating with Dudu and releasing music with him since 2008 – and working privately long before that. I think an artistic project that combines Arab and Jewish musicians is worthwhile. And one that reminds everyone that the Jewish cultural roots in countries like Iraq and Yemen go back for thousands of years, is also important.”
“Anyway, no art is as ‘important’ as stopping all the death and suffering around us. How can it be? But doing nothing seems a worse option. And silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t seem like any way to reach an understanding between the two sides of this apparently endless conflict.”
In 2023, Greenwood partnered with Tassa for an album, along with Palestinian singer Freteikh, Egyptian singer Ahmed Doma and Moroccan Mohssine Salaheddine.
