Thom Yorke briefly paused a solo performance in Melbourne, Australia, this week after an audience member called upon the Radiohead frontman to "condemn the Israeli genocide of Gaza."
Fan-shot footage of Yorke's Wednesday (October 30) performance at Melbourne's Sidney Myer Music Bowl shows the musician responding to a heckler, telling them to "hop up on stage" to share their remarks.
"Don't stand there like a coward, come here and say it. You want to piss on everybody's night? Okay you do it, see you later," Yorke continues, before removing his guitar and walking offstage.
Crowd members can be heard telling Yorke to "ignore him," while others booed the heckler. The artist later returned to the stage to close the evening with a rendition of Radiohead's "Karma Police."
In 2017, Yorke and Radiohead were asked to reconsider performing in Tel Aviv by peers including Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, TV on the Radio's Tuned Adebimpe and Young Fathers, who wrote in an open letter that "by playing in Israel you'll be playing in a state where, UN rapporteurs say, 'a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people.'"
Yorke would later call the open letter an "extraordinary waste of energy," while arguing that "playing in a country isn't the same as endorsing its government."
Palestinian authorities report that more than 43,000 Palestinians — predominantly women and children — have been killed in ongoing attacks from Israel since October 7. 2023 [via Reuters].