Since October 7, dozens of writers have penned dozens of columns pleading – in vain – to prominent politicians who wield transformative power to stop the genocide unfolding with such obscene lethality in the apocalyptic remains of occupied Gaza.
The same dynamic applies to a gallery of preening artists who claim that they are not only allergic to conformity, but also reject, as equivalent to censorship, any call from any quarter not to entertain audiences in Israel.
Instead of pleading with Nick Cave, the Australian troubadour, or the British band Radiohead, to finally heed the demands of Brian Eno, Roger Waters and company and renounce performing in a state of apartheid, my goal here is to challenge their now-discredited defenses choose to play in Tel Aviv.
After not performing in Israel for about 20 years, in 2014, Cave refrained from signing an artist-organized pledge (intended to show tangible solidarity with imprisoned Palestinians) to boycott tours in Israel after another wave of Israeli killings in Gaza. . .
Cave later explained his decision this way: “There was something that stunk to me about that list. Then it occurred to me that I wouldn't sign the list but I wouldn't play against Israel either and that seemed really cowardly to me.”
The lobby, Cave added, constituted a “public humiliation” that apparently fueled his determination to reject the overture and shows in Israel.
“It suddenly became very important to take a stand against those people who are trying to shut down musicians, intimidate them, censor them and silence them… so you could really say in some ways that BDS made me play in Israel,” Cave said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
In this flattering construction, Cave is the portrait of the principled renegade who resists the “old” rejecting forces bent on muzzling him and, by extension, his art.
In a 2017 letter to his “hero” Brian Eno, the British music expert behind the boycott campaign, Cave insisted that he did not support the Israeli government to blame for the “injustices suffered by the Palestinian population.”
And yet, like the Israeli government he distances himself from, Cave recycled the common canard to discredit the BDS movement by claiming that “the boycott of Israel can be seen as anti-Semitic at its core.”
Cave suggested that Eno should instead take a healthier approach by traveling to Israel to share his contempt for the “current regime” with “the Israeli press and people…then do a concert with the understanding that the purpose of his music “It was talking to the best angels of the Israeli people.”
Cave's warning is based on a false premise: that the “atrocities” suffered by generations of Palestinians are the sole responsibility of a succession of Israeli “regimes” and not of the millions of Israelis who empowered and emboldened those regimes by exercising their democratic right. . and again.
Cave praised Israel as a “real, vibrant, functioning democracy” but absolved “ordinary Israelis” of “atrocities” committed by the governments they elect.
Cave's insipid reasoning reached an embarrassing zenith in the next sentence that confuses naivety with wisdom.
“To what extent must we have moved away from the transformative nature of music to feel justified in weaponizing music and using it to punish ordinary Israeli citizens for the actions of their government?”
Tom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, has recycled, almost word for word, this reasoning in rejecting filmmaker Ken Loach, who implored the popular band not to go to Israel in 2017 given its encyclopedic record of egregious human rights violations.
“Playing for a country is not the same as supporting its government,” Yorke responded. “We do not support [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu no more than Trump, but we still play in the United States.”
Yorke's rejection of BDS has the veneer of seriousness that Cave's smear lacks.
“Music, art and academia,” he wrote, “are about crossing borders, not building them, about open and not closed minds, about shared humanity, dialogue and freedom of expression.”
Yorke's pretty soliloquy oozes saccharine. Gaza has been reduced to ruins by deliberate design. The Israeli architects of that ruin don't give a damn about crossing borders, opening minds, sharing humanity, dialogue and freedom of expression.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his septic cabinet are rampaging through Gaza and the occupied West Bank with the explicit consent, approval and encouragement of the majority of Israelis.
Polls consistently show that the vast majority of “ordinary Israelis” support all evil aspects of a genocide aimed at erasing Gaza. Carpet bombing. The widespread destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools and universities. The forced marches. The blockade of food, water, fuel and medicine: a sinister plan to starve Palestinians into submission and capitulation.
The “better angels” that Cave urged Eno to “speak” through music have been consumed, like most of Israel, by an insatiable murderous rage that burns like a towering bonfire.
Cave and Yorke have compounded their blindness with a hypocrisy that reveals a defining insincerity.
In 2022, a fan challenged Cave to square his open and blatant “solidarity” with Ukrainians with his blatant failure to do the same for “brutalized” and “suffering” Palestinians.
“This makes me sad,” the fan wrote, “because this makes you [sic] a position of double standards.”
Cave's response was a pretentious load of rhetorical mumbo-jumbo brimming with the usual evasions about how “a brutal, unprovoked attack” differs from “a deeply complex clash of two nations that is far from simple.”
Cave wrote that he “deeply sympathizes” with “the tragic fate of all innocents” and reminded his interlocutor that he has helped raise funds for schools in Palestinian “communities.”
“But this is not the time for these debates,” Cave said. “This is the time to unite in unequivocal support and love for the Ukrainian people. “There is a catastrophe unfolding right now and I stand with all Ukrainians at this horrible moment in history.”
Yorke parroted Cave’s condescension, chiding BDS supporters for engaging in “the kind of dialogue… that is black and white.”
There is nothing “complex” about the genocide carried out with ruthless and relentless efficiency by an occupying army that has killed more than 30,000 innocents and maimed and traumatized many others, with the cordial blessing of much of a grateful nation.
I suspect that the schools Cave defended are – like the 13,000 dead Palestinian babies and children – missing, shattered.
That is the blatant truth in black and white.
So, if you wish, play again in Israel, Mr Cave and Mr Yorke. Just don't pretend not to know who was complicit in this other “horrible moment in history” and that you chose to sing to them.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
