Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood performs in Tel Aviv, demonstrates for hostage release

Radiohead co-founder and guitarist Jonny Greenwood performed in Tel Aviv on Sunday night with sometimes musical collaborator Dudu Tessa, a day after being photographed at the Kaplan Street protests calling for the release of the hostages in Gaza and new elections in Israel.

Greenwood is married to Israeli artist Sharona Katan, whose family lost a nephew called up by the IDF after the Israel-Hamas war began.

At the Barby Club show, Greenwood and Tessa performed songs from their 2023  album of Arabic love songs, Jarak Qaribak, recorded with artists from around the Middle East, including Ahmed Duma from Cairo, Noor Freitah from Ramallah and Rashid Al-Najjar from Beirut.

Those guests weren’t at the Barby Club Sunday night, nor did a planned European tour for the album come to fruition, all victims of the war. Freitah shared a post at the beginning of the war claiming that the Israeli babies murdered by Hamas were “fake.”

At the show, Tessa commented that  “there are musicians here, not politicians,” N12 reported. “Music has always worked wonders, may we know better days and may everyone return safely.”

 The next day, the show generated a vigorous debate on a Reddit thread after one user attendee posted about it.

Debates online about the performance

“Jonny has a family member that was killed by Hamas. His wife (and his next generation) is Jewish. He obviously has a personal connection with the situation in Israel,” the poster wrote.

“Yesterday, I was there. It was a concert of a completely Arabic album that he did, named Jarak Qaribak (translation: your neighbor is your friend).  The night before, Jonny was on the streets of Tel Aviv, protesting the Israeli government (this is a documented truth).

“The show was great. Afterward, he came out to talk to us, signed our albums/setlists, and had photos with several of us. The loveliest guy… Obviously deeply saddened by what’s going on nowadays here.

“Yet here I see people that are canceling the guy, calling him and his wife all sorts of disgusting names, and the upvotes are in the hundreds. It’s so sickening. I hope I’m not the only one that is really fed up about this poisoned mindset that even reached music fandoms.”

In response to the post, Reddit users criticized Greenwood for playing in Israel and Katan for her social media posts defending Israel.

“I don’t think it’s much to ask artists not to perform in the country that’s actively massacring and starving a group of two million people whom they’ve had under apartheid control for decades,” wrote one user.

Another user wrote: “His wife, though, is publicly liking/retweeting propaganda that equates anyone in Europe waving a Palestinian flag as a potential Nazi who doesn’t “deserve” Jewish people, and that’s just not cool....If that rage/hatred is because one of their family members/friends was killed by Hamas, that’s horribly tragic obviously but it still does not justify equating Hamas with the entire people group of Palestinians (many of which are dying mercilessly at the hands of the soldiers they are memorializing here).”

Another user wrote: “He’s [Geenwood]  been quite open to supporting Israel and the IDF. I lost all my respect for Jonny.”

Radiohead, one of the world’s most popular bands, has performed in Israel numerous times since 1993. Israel’s embrace of the band’s song “Creep” is considered to be a factor in their rise in popularity following the lukewarm reception to their debut album that year, Pablo Honey.