2006-08-03 Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv, Israel

Notes

Depeche Mode stated on July 31st 2006:

"Depeche Mode regretfully announce the cancellation of their scheduled concert on August 3rd, 2006, at Hayarkon Park, following the latest developments. Unfortunately, at present there is no way to reschedule the concert, as this is the end of the Depeche Mode world tour. The band apologize to the fans, and thank them for their understanding."

On May 8th 2009, Depeche Mode held a press conference at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv, and when asked about the cancellation of this concert, Martin Gore said:

"We were very disappointed, very depressed about it. We had been looking forward to coming here, and we know we have a very big fanbase here. Really, the decision was taken out of our hands, because it wasn't just a decision made by us. Our crew felt that it was unsafe to come here at the time, and they had to spend more time here than we did. So we felt it was wrong for us to force our crew to come here when they didn't want to."

Andy Fletcher told Haaretz in 2013:

"We, the band, didn't want to cancel. But Hezbollah was firing all those rockets and we were to play in front of 50,000 people. So we thought, is this a sensible thing to do? In the end, it was our crew who voted against it. And we couldn't force 70 people to do something they considered dangerous."

The band also said at SXSW in 2013:

Dave: "The reason why we cancelled the show - there were lots of reasons. There were a lot of people working for us at the time, crew members and everything, who actually definitely said that they wouldn't be going, because they were afraid. It was a different situation. [...] I don't think it's political."

Andy: "We had a serious debate when we had to cancel that show. We asked the British Embassy."

Martin: "The crew took a vote, I think. They had a big discussion, and the majority of them didn't want to go. And we could have flown in, played the show, and flown out that night. But our crew had to go there and be there for three of four days. It's not really fair for us to say, "We're doing the show, you've gotta go there." So really, the crew kind of made that decision for us. And also, there's like 50,000 people in one place, and there are rockets flying, and we just felt it was maybe a bit unsafe and maybe creating a big target. [the audience starts laughing] I didn't mean that as a joke! I was serious. It does create a target."