Jonny Greenwood & Dudu Tassa UK exhibits cancelled amid protests from BDS Motion

Jonny Greenwood has seen two UK exhibits with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa cancelled after protests from the BDS motion.

The Radiohead guitarist has performed a handful of exhibits with Tassa in Tel Aviv during the last two years, most just lately in March this 12 months. After a pair of comparable exhibits final 12 months, the Palestinian Marketing campaign for the Educational and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion, described the occasions as “artwashing genocide”.

The pair have been as a result of play two exhibits within the UK subsequent month, at Bristol’s Beacon on June 23 and London’s Hackney Church on June 25. Nonetheless, it has been confirmed in current days that each exhibits have now been cancelled.

Responding to the primary gig being referred to as off, PACBI wrote on X: “Palestinians welcome the cancellation of Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa’s live performance, which was as a result of happen in Bristol, UK on the twenty third June and would have whitewashed Israel’s genocide towards 2.3m Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime.”

Palestinians welcome the cancellation of Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa’s live performance, which was as a result of happen in Bristol, UK on the twenty third June and would have whitewashed Israel’s genocide towards 2.3m Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid regime. pic.twitter.com/PE12H1ohVL

— PACBI – BDS motion (@PACBI) May 1, 2025

On Friday (Could 2), in addition they reacted to the second present’s cancellation: “UPDATE: Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa’s present at Hackney Church has additionally been cancelled. Palestinians welcome the cancellation of each of their UK exhibits. We reiterate our name for all venues to refuse to programme this complicit occasion that may solely artwash genocide.”

UPDATE: Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa's present at Hackney Church has additionally been cancelled. Palestinians welcome the cancellation of each of their UK exhibits. We reiterate our name for all venues to refuse to programme this complicit occasion that may solely artwash genocide. https://t.co/ne2TDXCKds

— PACBI – BDS motion (@PACBI) May 2, 2025

Neither Greenwood nor Tassa have publicly responded to the information of the exhibits being referred to as off.

Greenwood’s spouse, the artist Sharona Katan, is Israeli. Their household had a nephew who was serving within the Israeli Protection Forces and was killed within the ongoing warfare towards Hamas.

Reacting to the controversy after final 12 months’s Tel Aviv exhibits, Greenwood wrote: “I’ve been collaborating with Dudu and releasing music with him since 2008 – and dealing privately lengthy earlier than that. I feel an inventive undertaking that mixes Arab and Jewish musicians is worth it. And one which reminds everybody that the Jewish cultural roots in nations like Iraq and Yemen return for hundreds of years, can be essential.”

“Anyway, no artwork is as ‘essential’ as stopping all of the loss of life and struggling round us. How can it's? However doing nothing appears a worse possibility. And silencing Israeli artists for being born Jewish in Israel doesn’t look like any strategy to attain an understanding between the 2 sides of this apparently countless battle.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObW6bGDoi3Q[/embed]

Greenwood concluded: “So: that’s why I’m making music with this band. You’re welcome to disagree with, or ignore, what we do however I hope you now perceive what the true motivation is, and might react to the music with out suspicion or hate.”

PACBI mentioned in a response supplied to NME: “By performing in apartheid Tel Aviv whereas Israeli forces burned Palestinians alive in Rafah, Gaza – a reality he conveniently omits from his letter – Jonny Greenwood is knowingly complicit in overlaying up these atrocities. No progressive music fan can settle for this.

“All Palestinian/Arab musicians ought to refuse to behave as figleaves for worldwide artists crossing the Palestinian picket line – or for Israeli artists who've entertained Israeli forces massacring Palestinians, as Greenwood’s collaborator Dudu Tassa has repeatedly carried out.”

Greenwood and Tassa launched the collaborative album ‘Jarak Qaribak’ in 2023, an Arabic title that interprets as “Your Neighbour Is Your Good friend”. The album was made up of conventional Center Jap love songs, recorded with a spread of musicians enjoying fashionable interpretations.

Radiohead have carried out in Israel quite a few occasions all through their profession and their present there in 2017 proved particularly controversial.

The band confronted calls to cancel the gig, with an open letter issued by Artists For Palestine UK – and signed by musicians together with Roger Waters, Thurston Moore and Younger Fathers, in addition to Archbishop Desmond Tutu – asking the group to “assume once more” about their resolution amid an ongoing and widespread cultural boycott of the nation.

Radiohead Followers for Palestine additionally wrote, in an open letter to Thom Yorke, “it's the Palestinian individuals who have requested you to boycott and if you happen to’re going to justify your present in Tel Aviv it's them try to be addressing.”

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvlo40RWh4I[/embed]

At a solo present in Australia in October, Yorke clashed with an apparently pro-Palestinian protester. “Come up and say that. Proper right here,” he mentioned in response to the heckler. “Come up on the fucking stage and say what you wish to say. However don’t stand there like a coward, come right here and say it. Come on.”

“You wish to piss on everyone’s evening? Come on. OK, you do. So long then,” he added, departing the stage.

In the meantime, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien referred to as for a ceasefire in Gaza final 12 months. “Like so lots of you I've discovered the occasions of October 7 and what has adopted too terrible for phrases.. something that I've tried to jot down feels so totally insufficient. Ceasefire now. Return the hostages,” he wrote on Instagram.