Roger Waters reignites feud with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke over Israel

Posted On December 2, 2024December 2, 2024

Former Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters has reignited the feud with Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood over their stance on the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The ex-frontman and primary songwriter of the legendary rock group has long been an ardent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which strives “to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.”

He has criticised Radiohead before, having already had a public disagreement with them over their decision to play in Tel Aviv in 2017. At the time, Waters signed an open letter, alongside prominent public figures such as Thurston Moore, Young Fathers, Ken Loach, and Bishop Desmond Tutu, urging them not to play in Israel.

The letter maintained that by performing in the country, they were doing so in one that UN rapporteurs say has imposed “a system of apartheid” upon the Palestinian people. They also questioned why the Oxford band turned down the cultural boycott of Israel when they had campaigned for the freedom of Tibetans, another people under “foreign occupation”.

In a new interview with The Empire Files podcast, Waters has now doubled down on his position about Radiohead. He said: “I wrote (Yorke) a sort of email that went, ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was being confrontational’. He wrote back and he said, ‘Normally, people on one side of an argument at least have the decency or the grace or the something to have a conversation.’”

Waters continued: “So then I wrote him back, and I said, ‘Thom, the people in BDS have been trying to have a conversation with you for months! And so have I!’” Then, after being asked how the conversation ended, Waters responded: “That the guy’s a complete prick!”

At one point, the conversation discussed Yorke clashing with a pro-Palestine protester in Melbourne in October which led to the singer leaving the stage. “I think he’s damaged,” Waters commented. “He’s very damaged. He’s obviously very, very deeply insecure. He obviously thinks he’s very bright but he’s not. So he can’t actually have a conversation.”

Waters also touched on Greenwood facing criticism when he collaborated with the Israeli musician Dudu Tassa in the summer.

“It’s complete bullshit,” he asserted. “There is no argument to be made. There is the oppressed and the oppressor. The oppressed are the indigenous people of Palestine, the oppressor are the settler-colonial visitors from North America and North Europe… There is nothing difficult to understand. It is not a conflict. It is a genocide, Thom and Jonny!”

Roger Waters’ argument with Nick Cave over Israel

After Cave also played in Tel Aviv in 2017, he attracted criticism from Waters and Brian Eno. A year after that controversial show, Cave defended it in his newsletter, the Red Hand Files. He expressed his belief that “the cultural boycott of Israel is cowardly and shameful.”

Six years later, on a podcast interview with Reason, the Australian artist doubled down on his view despite the escalation of the conflict since October 7th. Cave said: “I just feel – and I’m no friend of the government of Israel – but I just feel on some level that I find it difficult to come to terms with using my music in order to punish ordinary people because of the acts of their government. It sort of comes down to that, to some degree.”

Waters hit back at Cave’s comments in a video uploaded to social media. He started by referring to Cave as “the Aussie bloke” before saying, “Nick Cave. Nick fucking Cave”.

He continued: “The Palestinian mother/father carrying the bits of her or his dead child back along the bitter road to nowhere in a plastic bag pauses on the roadside to scratch a message in the rubble. Nick, here’s the message. Dear Nick Cave, we, the Indigenous people of Palestine, in this agony, implore you, please don’t cross the BDS picket line to sing for your supper in Israel.”

The bassist passionately added: “It’s not complicated, Nick. It’s not complicated. That act — singing for your supper in Israel, Nick — that act serves to whitewash the 75-year-old Zionist Israeli occupation, land theft, apartheid, and genocide of our people, Nick.”

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