{"id":435246,"date":"2025-09-19T04:40:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T04:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/435246\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T04:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T04:40:11","slug":"the-together-for-palestine-concert-was-gutting-but-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/435246\/","title":{"rendered":"The Together for Palestine Concert Was Gutting but Necessary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The music industry has a mixed track record when it comes to altruism: For every Concert for Bangladesh<\/a>, a thoughtful and timely project that has endured as a piece of era-defining art, there is a \u201cDo They Know It\u2019s Christmas?,\u201d a song conceived by a handful of rich white musicians who seemed to assume the Christian-majority Ethiopia didn\u2019t know the most important Christian holiday.<\/p>\n

I was fearful that Together for Palestine<\/a>, a huge charity event at London\u2019s 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena organized by Brian Eno<\/a>, Khaled Ziada, Khalid Abdalla, and Tracey Seaward, would fall into the latter category: Israel has been waging a full-scale assault on the Gaza Strip for nearly two years, and, for the vast majority of that time, the upper echelon of the music industry has largely been silent. Many of the musicians and speakers on the initial lineup<\/a> had barely said a word about Palestine in the early months of Israel\u2019s siege and vastly disproportionate, violent response to Hamas\u2019 October 7, 2023, attacks<\/a>. That these famous names were dedicating time and energy to the cause nearly two years later felt to me like a poor attempt to rectify what felt like eons of damning, upsetting silence.<\/p>\n

That may be true to a degree\u2014I still find it unnerving that so many with the power to mobilize large groups of people declined to use that power until even once-callous Israel hawks started to acknowledge that the country\u2019s actions in Gaza are inhumane\u2014but Together for Palestine was not entirely a milquetoast exercise in \u201csending love across the world\u201d or preaching apolitical unity in a time of social discord.<\/p>\n

Instead, it felt like a wake for the more than 65,000 Palestinians killed by Israel. Despite the best attempts of the musicians onstage to play songs that were bright and joyous\u2014as when Hot Chip<\/a>, Ibibio Sound Machine<\/a>, and the Trans Voices choir tapped into anthemic diva house for their joint performance\u2014the mood at Wembley Arena was profoundly somber. Every valiant, successful effort to rally the audience, to remind us of how much power average people have in swaying governments and affecting change, was countered with a reminder of how little people who live in the West, from politicians to journalists to civilians, have done to support Palestine.<\/p>\n

In a refreshing change of pace from the average star-studded benefit, no attempts were made to act like we are not living in desolate times. The 25-year-old Palestinian journalist Yara Eid spoke about the death of her \u201csoulmate\u201d and fellow journalist, Ibrahim, before introducing a video montage paying tribute to all the Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Palestine. Drawings of each journalist, along with details of how and when they were killed\u2014often alongside family, or while reporting\u2014faded in onto the screen at an increasingly rapid clip, until there were so many deceased onscreen that it all became static. As pundit Mehdi Hasan had reminded us moments earlier, studies show<\/a> that more Palestinian journalists have been killed during this conflict than in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and both world wars combined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The music industry has a mixed track record when it comes to altruism: For every Concert for Bangladesh,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[147654,14662,4829,77,16367,16,15,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-435246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-_opinion","9":"tag-brian-eno","10":"tag-columns","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115229126246168858","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}