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‘Nowhere Near Netanyahu’: Thom Yorke Says Radiohead Will ‘Absolutely Not’ Perform in Israel
Thom Yorke, frontman of Radiohead. Photo: Alex Cropper/Sipa USA
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke said the British rock band will not be performing in Israel again, even though the group’s lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, has family roots in the Jewish state.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Yorke, 57, was asked if Radiohead would return to Israel for a concert after the band’s controversial gig in Tel Aviv in 2017.
“Absolutely not,” the vocalist replied, before taking a shot at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime, but Jonny has roots there. So, I get it.”
The interview took place before the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization halted fighting in Gaza.
“I would also politely disagree with Thom,” Greenwood added during the interview. “I would argue that the government is more likely to use a boycott and say, ‘Everyone hates us — we should do exactly what we want.’ Which is far more dangerous.”
Radiohead performed at Park Hayarkon in July 2017 despite criticism and pressure to cancel the show from supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, including director Ken Loach and musicians Roger Waters, Thurston Moore, and Young Fathers.
During a solo show in Melbourne, Australia, last year, Yorke was heckled by an audience member about his silence on the Israel-Hamas war. The incident resulted in Yorke storming off stage. He later posted a lengthy statement on social media explaining what happened and also his thoughts on the Middle East conflict.
“I think Netanyahu and his crew of extremists are totally out of control and need to be stopped, and that the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease,” the musician wrote. He also argued that “the unquestioning Free Palestine refrain that surrounds us all does not answer the simple question of why the hostages still have not all been returned? For what possible reason?”
Greenwood, 53, is married to Israeli artist Sharona Katan. He has collaborated with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa since 2008, and in 2023, they released an album titled “Jarak Qaribak” (“Your Neighbor Is Your Friend”), which features musicians from across the Middle East. Greenwood and Tassa have performed together in Israel and were scheduled to have shows in the UK this summer, but they were canceled following pressure and alleged threats from BDS supporters.
Radiohead announced last month that for the first time in over seven years, the band will play live shows across Europe in November and early December. During the band’s break, Yorke and Greenwood worked together on three albums for their side band, The Smile. Yorke told The Sunday Times he is concerned about the new tour being targeted by anti-Israel agitators.
“But they don’t care about us,” he added. “It’s about getting something on Instagram of something dramatic happening and, no, I don’t think Israel should do Eurovision. But I don’’ think Eurovision should do Eurovision. So, what do I know?”
Immediately after the announcement about Radiohead’s tour, supporters of the BDS movement called for a boycott of the concerts. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) complained about the band’s alleged “complicit silence” about the Israel-Hamas war and support for Israeli performers, like Tassa, during the “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” PACBI urged Radiohead fans to boycott the band’s concerts until it “convincingly distances itself” from Greenwood because of his performances in Israel and collaboration with Israeli musicians.
PACBI also noted that Radiohead has “yet to apologize” for the band’s 2017 performance in Israel and criticized Tassa for entertaining “genocidal Israeli forces in between these massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, willingly acting as a cultural ambassador for apartheid Israel.” Tassa played a show for the Israel Defense Forces in November 2023.
“This wakes me up at night,” Yorke told The Sunday Times about the boycott efforts. “They’re telling me what it is that I’ve done with my life, and what I should do next, and that what I think is meaningless. People want to take what I’ve done that means so much to millions of people and wipe me out. But this is not theirs to take from me — and I don’t consider I’m a bad person.”
“A few times recently I’ve had ‘Free Palestine!’ shouted at me on the street. I talked to a guy. His shtick was, ‘You have a platform, a duty and must distance yourself from Jonny’ … It’s a purity test, low-level Arthur Miller witch-hunt,” he added about being targeted by pro-Palestinian activists and pressured to distance himself from Greenwood. “I utterly respect the dismay but it’s very odd to be on the receiving end.”
Greenwood defended himself against the criticism over his close connection to Israel and work with Israeli musicians.
“When what I do with the musicians is described as sinister or devious? Well, I’ve done this for 20 years,” he explained to The Sunday Times. “Look, I have been to anti-government protests in Israel … I spend a lot of time there with family and cannot just say, ‘I’m not making music with you f–kers because of the government.’ It makes no sense to me. I have no loyalty — or respect, obviously — to their government, but I have both for the artists born there.”
“The only thing that I’m ashamed of is that I’ve dragged Thom and the others into this mess — but I’m not ashamed of working with Arab and Jewish musicians,” he told the publication. “I can’t apologize for that.”
Yorke previously responded to backlash about Radiohead’s 2017 concert in Tel Aviv. “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government. We don’t endorse Netanyahu any more than [US President Donald] Trump,” he said.
Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, 57, has posted on social media in the past in support of the “Free Palestine” cause. He also wrote in a social media post last year: “Like so many of you I have found the events of Oct. 7 and what has followed too awful for words. Anything that I have tried to write feels so utterly inadequate. Ceasefire now. Return the hostages.” When asked by The Sunday Times about the controversy surrounding Radiohead’s 2017 gig in Israel, he said, “We should have played Ramallah in the West Bank as well.”
Radiohead drummer Philip Selway, 58, told the publication that it is “impossible” for the band to meet the demands of the BDS movement. “They want us to distance ourselves from Jonny, but that would mean the end of the band and Jonny is coming from a very principled place,” he said. “But it’s odd to be ostracized by artists we generally felt quite aligned to.”
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.