Radiohead playing in Israel - and hell breaking loose :)

Kyriakos

Kyriakos

Creator
Joined
Oct 15, 2003
Messages
77,912
Location
The Dream
I always thought Thom Yorke was incredibly douchey (going from interviews and some live show moments). So it was no surprise that Radiohead didn't give in to the backlash by various other known bands (including the legendary Pink Floyd) and are playing a tour in Israel. They were attacked due to supporting apartheid against Palestine.

Anyway, at least it made #RealRadiohead appear :lol:


"I float like white phosphorus" :D

Imo RH are wrong, but their personalities (Yorke and the lead guitarist at least) are very adversarial. They do stand to lose, though, a bit like Metallica did with the Napster charade.

-Creeps? Or no target of Karma police?

Moderator Action: Spoiler'd the Facebook video as its title and description contains profanity. - Vincour
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Don't particularly like Radiohead but this is absurd. Radiohead never said anything about supporting Israel (as far as I know). It appears to just be a non-political rock show. Radiohead doesn't owe anything to anyone. They're just a band and they can play wherever they want. You don't like them? Fine, don't buy their records or go to their shows. Those guys have so much money that at this point I bet they don't even care.

I'll also add that Thom Yorke is Jewish himself, and I suspect the anti-Semites are at least partially responsible for egging this on.
 
Meanwhile, controversy is boiling over a Radiohead video suspected of glorifying Vladimir Putin...

 
Lexicus said:
Would hope that all artists would boycott shows in Israel until apartheid falls.
Click to expand...

The problem is that nearly all states have some sort of moral deficiency to which Israel's occupation of Palestine, while bad, simply does not compare.

Really bad states boycott themselves anyway; consider the DPRK.
 
Unless they're calling their tour of Israel "The F Palestine tour" and speaking out against the creation of the Palestinian state, I don't see anything wrong with this.

People are just looking for things to be outraged about.
 
Israel has caused nothing but trouble in the Middle East and all they do is blame everyone else for their problems. It's easy to see why they are hated, but Radiohead really has nothing to do with all of that. At the end of the day it's just a concert.
 
Lexicus said:
Would hope that all artists would boycott shows in Israel until apartheid falls.
Click to expand...
If Paul Simon had done that with South Africa then we would have never had Graceland.
 
Lexicus said:
Such as?
Click to expand...

The Undemocratic Juche Kimdom of Korea. Like I said, the really bad states boycott themselves, since very practically no artists have performed there. (Save for Laibach, KUDOS for daring)
 
Lexicus said:
Okay, I'll admit that North Korea is worse than Israel, but...that's one
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you here that it is no justification at all. However, there is nothing unique about the kind repression in and by Israel, which is in fact even seen in the likes of Hungary and the USA, not just Israel's enemies or the really bad states (like Kimland as we've discussed earlier).

The very problem with the BDS movement is not really that they are wrong in pointing out the repression of Arab Israelis and Palestinians by Israel; it's their insistence on the unique nature of Israel (which plays into the cards of the settler movement) and their chosen tactics to end repression of their cause that makes it dangerous.
 
Yes. BDS fails to distinguish between Israelis and Israel and ignore the opportunity for potential allies within Israel and among Jews in general. In so doing, they are also playing into the cards of West-Bank settlers.
 
Here is my problem with the "cultural boycott" of Israel.


Link to video.

This is a video of The Unternationale playing in Tel Aviv. The Unternationale is a musical project founded by Daniel Kahn, a Jewish-American, and Psoy Korolenko, a Jewish-Russian, supported by the Jewish-Israeli neo-Klezmer group Oy Division. To say that explicitly and emphatically Jewish artists like Kahn and Korolenko should be prohibited from performing their explicitly and emphatically Jewish music in the one place they are likely to find a predominantly Jewish audience, to say that the preservation and celebration of Jewish culture is continent on this-or-that political campaign, seems to me, functionally indistinguishable from anti-Semitism, to be, therefore, a sort of functional anti-Semitism.

So we draw an exception around Jewish-themed artists. But where is that line drawn? Jewish themes flow the work of Jewish artists even they aren't singing in Yiddish or about the Bund. So we say that Jewish artists gets a pass. But how do we decide what counts as a Jewish artist? Is one Jew and four gentiles Jewish enough? Is one Jewish grandparent enough? In how Jewish an environment should they have been raised? How recently should their ancestors have spoken Yiddish, Ladino or Hebrew? Who is in a position to police who is and is not a Jew, except the Jews themselves? And are a majority or even sizable minority of Jews likely to offer their expertise in support of this project? So it all very quickly dissolves into absurdity, and if we can't produce a clear guide to who is "Jewish enough" to play in Israel, how can we insist on that criteria in the first place?

(For the record, I don't think that Radiohead has any Jewish members, although it does bear asking, would any of us have known that without Googling it? And if not, how much relevance can it have?)

Israel, for all its flaws, is not a fascist state. It isn't even, all things considered, particularly noxious by the standards of a Western power: all the great and civilised countries have resorted to far deeper barbarism under far less threat. The Israelis have stolen a sizeable chunk of the West Bank, but the civilised countries of Western Europe, between them, stole around three-quarters of the world's surface. So, in light of the concerns raised above, I don't think a blanket ban is tenable, but in the absence of a blanket ban, what rationale do we have?
 
Last edited:
I was merely expressing a hope that artists would voluntarily choose not to play there, a "ban" is not something I have ever heard discussed.

Traitorfish said:
Israel, for all its flaws, is not a fascist state. It isn't even, all things considered, particularly noxious by the standards of a Western power: all the great and civilised countries have resorted to far deeper barbarism under far less threat. The Israelis have stolen a sizeable chunk of the West Bank, but the civilised countries of Western Europe, between them, stole around three-quarters of the world's surface.
Click to expand...

By this logic what was the rationale for boycotting South Africa?
 
Lexicus said:
By this logic what was the rationale for boycotting South Africa?
Click to expand...
South Africa was, for some 80% of its population, a fascist state, or functionally indistinguishable from one.

civver_764 said:
Yeah they get other western powers like America to do their dirty work for them...
Click to expand...
I don't understand that this comment. Or perhaps I don't want to? Hard to say.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom