Because Oct 7, scores of writers have authored scores of columns pleading – to no avail – with popular politicians who wield transformative electric power to stop the genocide unfolding with such obscene lethality in the apocalyptic remnants of occupied Gaza.

The exact dynamic applies to a gallery of preening artists who declare that they are not only allergic to conformity, but also reject as tantamount to censorship any contact from any quarter not to entertain audiences in Israel.

Fairly than beseeching Nick Cave, the Australian troubadour, or the British band, Radiohead, at last to heed the petitions of Brian Eno, Roger Waters and enterprise and forgo carrying out in an apartheid condition, my aim below is to challenge their, by now, discredited defences to opt to play in Tel Aviv.

Soon after not carrying out in Israel for some 20 years, in 2014, Cave refrained from signing on to an artist-organised pledge – meant to exhibit tangible solidarity with imprisoned Palestinians – to boycott touring in Israel in the aftermath of however yet another Israeli killing spree in Gaza.

Cave later on spelled out his determination this way: “There was a thing that stunk to me about that checklist. Then it sort of occurred to me that I’m not signing the record but I’m also not taking part in Israel and that just felt to me cowardly, seriously.”

The lobbying, Cave added, constituted a “public humiliation” that apparently fuelled his resolve to spurn the overture and stage demonstrates in Israel.

“It all of a sudden grew to become really vital to make a stand versus those persons that are seeking to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians, and to silence musicians … so actually you could say in a way that the BDS produced me participate in Israel,” Cave claimed, referring to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions motion.

In this flattering build, Cave is the portrait of the principled renegade resisting the “age-old” rejectionist forces bent on muzzling him and, by extension, his art.

In a 2017 letter to his “hero” Brian Eno, the British musical savant guiding the boycott travel, Cave insisted that he was not a supporter of the Israeli government to blame for the “injustices experienced by the Palestinian population”.

And nonetheless, like the Israeli authorities he distances himself from, Cave recycled the inventory canard to discredit the BDS movement by professing that “the boycott of Israel can be observed as anti-Semitic at heart”.

Cave instructed that Eno should really, instead, undertake a more salutary approach by travelling to Israel to share his scorn for the “current regime” with “the press and the Israeli persons … then do a concert on the comprehending that the objective of your audio was to communicate to the Israeli people’s greater angels”.

Cave’s admonition is grounded on a fake premise: that the “atrocities” endured by generations of Palestinians are the sole obligation of a succession of Israeli “regimes” and not the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who empowered and emboldened all those regimes by doing exercises their democratic franchise – time and all over again.

Cave lauded Israel as a “real, vibrant and functioning democracy” but absolved “ordinary Israelis” of the “atrocities” fully commited by the governments they elect.

Cave’s jejune reasoning reached an uncomfortable zenith in the subsequent sentence that confuses naivete for wisdom.

“How far ought to we have strayed from the transformative character of tunes to feel justified in weaponising songs and employing it to punish regular Israeli citizens for the actions of their authorities.”

Tom Yorke, the direct singer for Radiohead, has recycled, close to-verbatim, this rationale in rebuffing filmmaker, Ken Loach, who implored the popular band not to go to Israel in 2017 specified its encyclopaedic record of egregious human legal rights violations.

“Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its federal government,” Yorke responded. “We don’t endorse [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we however perform in The united states.”

Yorke’s rejection of BDS has the patina of gravitas that Cave’s smear lacks.

“Music, art and academia,” he wrote, “is about crossing borders not making them, about open minds not closed ones, about shared humanity, dialogue and flexibility of expression.”

Yorke’s rather soliloquy oozes saccharine. Gaza has been lessened to ruins by deliberate style. The Israeli architects of that spoil do not give a hoot about crossing borders, opening minds, shared humanity, dialogue and freedom of expression.

Key Minister Netanyahu and his septic cupboard are razing Gaza and the occupied West Financial institution with the specific consent, acceptance and encouragement of most Israelis.

Polls consistently clearly show that the large the greater part of “ordinary Israelis” again just about every malignant element of a genocide meant to erase Gaza. The carpet bombing. The blanket destruction of properties, hospitals, mosques, church buildings, schools and universities. The forced marches. The blockade of food items, water, gasoline, and medicine – a sinister blueprint to starve Palestinians into submission and capitulation.

The “better angels” Cave urged Eno to “speak to” as a result of audio, have, like the bulk of Israel, been consumed by an unquenchable killing rage that burns like a towering bonfire.

Cave and Yorke have compounded their blindness with hypocrisy that reveals a defining insincerity.

In 2022, Cave was challenged by a fan to sq. his vocal, unabashed “solidarity” with Ukrainians with his evident failure to do the exact for “brutalised” and “suffering” Palestinians.

“This saddens me,” the fan wrote, “for this puts you on [sic] a place of a double common.”

Cave’s reply was a pretentious lump of rhetorical flim-flam brimming with the standard evasions about how “a brutal, unprovoked attack” differs from “a deeply elaborate clash of two nations that is significantly from straightforward”.

Cave wrote that he “sympathises deeply” with “the tragic fate of all innocents” and reminded his interlocutor that he has aided raise dollars for schools in Palestinian “communities”.

“But this is not the time for these debates,” Cave averred. “This is the time to unite in unequivocal guidance and love for the Ukrainian individuals. Right now a catastrophe is unfolding, and I stand with all Ukrainians at this horrific minute in heritage.”

Yorke parroted Cave’s condescension, scolding BDS supporters for participating in “the form of dialogue … that’s black and white.”

There is almost nothing “complex” about the genocide currently being perpetrated with ruthless, relentless effectiveness by an occupying military that has killed extra than 30,000 innocents and maimed and traumatised innumerable others – with the hearty blessing of a lot of a grateful country.

I suspect that the schools Cave championed are – like the 13,000 useless Palestinian infants and little ones – gone, shattered into bits.

That is the flagrant fact in black and white.

So, engage in in Israel all over again if you’re inclined, Mr Cave and Mr Yorke. Just really do not faux not to know who was complicit in this other “horrific instant in history” and that you selected to sing to them.

The sights expressed in this post are the author’s have and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.