a letter to Radiohead

i’m a big fan of Radiohead, and have been for a couple of years now. three of my favourite albums of all time are Radiohead LPs, and OKNOTOK made me feel a sense of kinship with the idea of catching yourself acting like a cop, of being alienated by a society that you gain privilege from, and of what it means to be accepted.

i’m nineteen years old, and i was born and currently live in Israel. i’ve survived a near-direct missile hit from lebanon in ‘06, my family still lives up north, and i know what goes on, within and without. i am writing this letter to express my disappointment with you, with your support of Israel during this horrid war, and during “peace”-time, too.

you, Thom, claim that playing in a country does not mean you agree with the government’s politics. that is a charitable enough statement on its own, but you must understand that Benjamin Netanyahu has gone on record multiple times saying that ending this war would be a deal-breaker for getting the hostages back home, the thing he is claiming to want to do. he is refusing to end the war with Hamas, a militant organization he himself has been funding since he assumed office, because they’re better than the alternative: a leftist political party that would push harder for independence, instead of the current hell they’re stuck in, where Israel tells them to stop hitting themselves.

you, Jonny, act like you know it all, just because your wife is Israeli. were you there, on october seventh? because i was. i was locked in a shelter, my dad clutching the handle shut, the rest of my family watching the news in horror. 1200 people were killed. three hundred more taken. and in a show of force, Israel killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, not to return the hostages, not to end this terrible war, but to show them who’s boss. Israel, the state, its military; not some rogue militant organization who rose to power against the will of the people. a military millions of people band behind is engaging in the routine killing of innocent Palestinians.

by supporting Israel, you support war, genocide, and mass displacement. you support the same killing machine that used Jonny’s nephew as ammunition to fund a terror campaign in the name of “exterminating the problem”. who cares if they hit a hospital? they’ll find some terrorists in the rubble to blame it on. shame on you.