Dear Nick Cave, Thom Yorke, and Jonny Greenwood,
We write this letter as people who have long admired your musical genius; your work has moved millions, including ourselves. But admiration must not be mistaken for agreement, and where conscience is concerned, silence or polite ambiguity is no virtue.
Your recent dismissals of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — describing it as “embarrassing” or “deeply damaging” — demand a response rooted not in anger, but in the reality of the world as it is for Palestinians.
Roger Waters, in his passionate advocacy, reminded us that this is not complicated. And he is right. The facts speak plainly: a people — the Palestinians — have lived under military occupation, violent displacement, systemic discrimination, and siege for generations. What BDS seeks is not the destruction of Israel, but the end of apartheid and the realisation of basic rights long denied to an indigenous people.
Nick, you have said you do not wish to punish Israeli citizens “for being born in Israel.” No one is asking you to. The cultural boycott does not target individuals based on ethnicity or origin. It targets institutions that are enmeshed in a structure of apartheid. This distinction matters. It is not Israelis who are being boycotted; it is complicity.
When Radiohead performed in Tel Aviv in 2017, and when, more recently, Jonny Greenwood played in Israel with Dudu Tassa while bombs fell on Palestinians in Rafah, this was not a neutral act. Cultural events in Israel are not isolated from politics; they are part of the state’s effort to portray itself as a liberal, democratic society, even as it continues to commit human rights abuses with impunity.
Thom, you lamented that those advocating for BDS do not want to have a conversation. Yet Waters and countless others tried repeatedly to engage in good faith; not to shame, but to persuade. Dialogue was offered; it was declined. What more polite wording could possibly make a mother cradling her child’s remains in Gaza more palatable?
History offers a painful but clear parallel. In the 1980s, artists and institutions were asked not to play Sun City, not because they hated white South Africans, but because they recognised that entertaining under apartheid was morally untenable. The cultural boycott helped bring down that system. It worked, not through violence or hatred, but through consistent, principled refusal to whitewash injustice.
This is not censorship. This is conscience.
As Roger Waters put it, “There is the oppressed and the oppressor.” It is no longer credible — if it ever was — to cast this as a “conflict” between equals. It is not. It is a settler-colonial occupation. And when artists of your stature choose to stand aloof, or worse, to lend cultural legitimacy to a regime of apartheid, the silence resounds as complicity.
You are not being asked to become political leaders. You are simply being asked not to cross a picket line.
There is still time to listen. There is still time to stand with those whose voices are drowned out daily under rubble and military rule. Music should never be used to silence the cries of the oppressed; it should amplify them.
Yours in solidarity and hope,
Jason and Deb Cridland
