What Brian Eno’s “Together For Palestine” Concert Says About Music Activism

May 15th is marked every year as Nakba Day to remember the mass displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their land during the war.  

In a strange coincidence, it is also the birthday of the godfather of ambient music, Brian Eno. 

Born in Suffolk, England, on the very same day the state of Israel was created, Eno grew up in a post-war British milieu where Israel was celebrated. As he later recalled in a personal essay for VICE, he admired the kibbutz movement as a model of egalitarian, communal living, absorbing the “Beautiful Israel” narratives of democracy and socialism that painted Zionist pioneers as the bedrock of a just, thriving nation.

Now, after 12 months of planning, one of the largest benefit concerts yet is about to take place: Brian Eno’s Together for Palestine. Eno has followed the Palestine–Israel conflict closely throughout his life, and it’s no wonder since every birthday of his has coincided with the annual commemoration of that catastrophe. 

By the 1990s, as peace talks repeatedly collapsed and Israeli settlement building expanded, his early admiration gave way to disillusionment. Since then, he has consistently used his platform to speak out against the injustices faced by the Palestinian people.

Scheduled for September 17, 2025, at London’s OVO Arena Wembley, the event will raise funds for the charity Choose Love, with all proceeds going to Palestinian-led organisations providing humanitarian relief. Acts confirmed include PinkPantheress, James Blake, and others alongside Palestinian artists like Adnan Joubran, Nai Barghouti, and others, with more names to be announced.

“In the face of the horrors of Gaza, silence becomes complicity. Artists have always helped societies point out injustice and imagine better futures,” Eno said in a statement. 

Eno will serve as executive producer for the evening alongside production managers Khaled Ziada, Khalid Abdalla, and Tracey Seaward. Ziada told DJ Mag: “In a world where governments and mainstream media have fallen silent in the face of genocide, this gathering becomes a chorus of resistance, where artists and communities come together to grieve, to rage, and to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinian people, and with all those who suffer injustice.”

Many artists have chosen silence, fearing career backlash, lost bookings, or blacklisting for joining demonstrations, anything that might brand them as “political.” But fear itself is part of the machinery that keeps oppression in place. Every voice that speaks out makes it easier for the next one to do the same.

In times like these, silence becomes its own form of complicity. Governments, institutions, and so-called experts have failed us for decades. The least you can do, if you have a voice, is use it or hand the mic to someone who will.

That’s what Massive Attack did earlier this year at LIDO Festival, bringing actor and activist Khalid Abdalla on stage before their set. 

“Make some noise if you want your favorite artists to stand up for Palestine,” he urged. “Put your hand on your heart if you have wept over images of children, and mothers, and fathers, over the last two years. And you know what? Make some noise because it means you have a beating heart. That heart is the key to our future.”

At the 2024 Grammys, Annie Lennox was the only artist to use the stage to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, framing it as a tribute to Sinéad O’Connor. Fast forward to this summer, and you can barely turn without seeing artists speak out: Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Gracie Abrams, Lana Del Rey, all calling out starvation and genocide. At Coldplay concerts and major outdoor festivals, Palestinian flags have become a fixture. And it isn’t just a coincidence, part of that visibility comes down to Coldplay’s collaboration with Palestinian-Chilean pop star Elyanna, who joined them on stage at Glastonbury and on record for We Pray. The cause has shifted from marginal to mainstream, largely thanks to musicians’ advocacy.

As I write this, I’m hearing news of 223 Palestinians killed, including 137 who were simply seeking aid. As conditions in Gaza have worsened since October 7, 2023, so did the backlash against outspoken artists. 

In April, Irish trio Kneecap drew heavy criticism for projecting messages like “F*** Israel, Free Palestine” during their Coachella set. Since 2023, the Irish Republican trio from Belfast have made Palestinian liberation central to their brand, using their stage and social media as one of the most visible anti-Zionist forces in music today. For them, the connection is personal; Ireland and Palestine share a history of colonization and partition at the hands of the British. “The mainstream media… always portray it as Israel versus Hamas and never actually mention the genocide,” DJ Próvaí told an interviewer in 2024. “We have a platform, and we have to use it to counter that narrative.” 

Trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack have boycotted Israel since 1999, becoming one of the most consistent cultural opponents of Israeli apartheid. Refusing compromise, Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall have channelled their influence into benefit gigs, public condemnations, and calls for divestment. This year, they joined Fontaines D.C. and Young Fathers for the Ceasefire EP, donating all proceeds to Doctors Without Borders in Gaza and the West Bank. Others have paid a high price. British duo Bob Vylan led a “Death to the IDF” chant at Glastonbury, costing them festival slots, US visas, and representation. Canadian politicians and pro-Israel lobby groups are now pushing to bar both Bob Vylan and Kneecap from entering the country. 

Long before “being on the right side of history” became a Western pastime, Sinéad O’Connor risked her career again and again to stand with Palestine. Since witnessing Israeli apartheid firsthand in 2006, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has been a vocal supporter of the BDS movement, undeterred by accusations of antisemitism. Macklemore has been vocal in criticizing the U.S. for failing to take a stronger stance on the genocide since releasing his protest track Hind’s Hall and executive producing the documentary The Encampments about the ongoing assault on Gaza. 

For Palestinian artists, the stakes are even higher. On October 11, 2024, DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi publicly condemned the use of her music in a U.S. election campaign ad for Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The ad, Like Detroit, featured footage of Abdulhadi performing at Movement Festival without her consent, something she called ‘deeply offensive to my social, moral and political beliefs.’ She stressed: ‘I do not endorse, nor have I ever endorsed Vice President Harris,’ and said she was taking legal steps to have the video removed.

She has previously been featured in Palestine Underground, the 2018 Boiler Room documentary that introduced the world to the West Bank’s thriving rave scene. A must-watch documentary that has gained global attention, it remains one of the rare occasions where Palestinian underground music is being heard and streamed globally, despite artists living through genocide. From the opening of the film with DJ Oddz scaling the eight-meter separation wall to get to a gig, to hip-hop artist Muqata’a in Ramallah and the Jazar crew in Haifa, it chronicled a generation of artists reclaiming space to create, and connect under occupation. 

Palestinian artists, especially those who perform in Arabic or non-English dialects, face not only language barriers but also other pressures, aiming to communicate directly with their own people to show solidarity from within, born into politics, without a choice to speak about it. This is the case with Shabjdeed, who denied his music being political: “We don’t sing politics. Just because we’re Palestinians, you put on a keffiyeh to see us, no matter what we say, it’s a political message,” he told Primavera Sound in a 2025 interview. Speaking out about the genocide isn’t politics; don’t let anyone sell you the excuse of “staying out of politics.” 

Since the violence in Gaza escalated in late 2023 into what the United Nations as deemed a genocide, military lockdowns, curfews, and venue closures have made gatherings impossible. Bans, visa revocations, and even disappearances underscore how threatened governments and institutions can feel by underground artists and musicians speaking their truth. 

For many Palestinian and Levantine artists, the road is ten times harder when it comes to breaking records or topping Western charts. They face visa bans, political blacklisting, and the daily realities of occupation. 

Yet their raw, first-hand music still travels across borders. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains the world’s fastest-growing recorded music region for the second time in three years. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s annual Global Music Report, the region’s revenues grew by 22.8 percent in 2024, surpassing $144 million.

In some cases, Palestinian voices have carried this fight into the heart of pop culture. 

“The people of Gaza have been undergoing a brutal genocide for the past six months,” Saint Levant told his crowd at Coachella on April 14th, opening his set with a live-streamed performance from Gaza featuring two local Palestinian singers with the song Sawf Naqba Huna—a rallying cry right in the middle of a major U.S. festival. 

From Haifa, Bruno Cruz, a pioneer of Palestinian EDM, has spent decades organizing raves worldwide, while younger talents like Dubai-based Karim Atari are channeling grief into sonic resistance. Atari’s Majzara Blues fuses harrowing textures with defiant intent: “They’ve made these words sound like a demonic evil thing,” he says, “when it’s really about people fighting for their own rights.”

French-Lebanese producer Arabian Panther performs exclusively in a black keffiyeh in solidarity with Palestine, blending traditional Arabic melodies with abrasive techno in what he calls a “lone warrior” fight for justice. His activism has cost him high-profile gigs, including a booking at Berlin’s Berghain, the world’s most famous techno club and a global rite of passage for electronic artists. Still, he sees music as a weapon: “Activism was embedded in this project before I released any music.”

In efforts to protect artists from backlash for speaking about Palestine, Brian Eno formed part of a group of musicians in July who announced the formation of a syndicate for artists speaking out about Israel’s military assault on Gaza, who they say have been subjected to “aggressive, vexatious campaigns” by pro-Israel advocates. Other names involved include Fontaines D.C., Kneecap and Massive Attack.

Posting on Instagram, the artists said their aim was to protect other artists, particularly those at early stages of their careers, from being “threatened into silence or career cancellation” by organizations such as U.K. Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). 

If Brian Eno’s Together for Palestine marks one of the largest benefit concerts yet, it also carries the symbolism of countless small acts of resistance that have shaped global solidarity to the oppressed silenced people of Palestine. We’ve seen the keffiyeh, the flag, and raised voices, in the streets, at music festivals, and across stages which reminders us that solidarity can take many forms, inside and outside the worlds of art and music.

Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who rose to global prominence for his fearless documentation of life in Gaza, once said in an interview with Karim Rahma: “The camera is much stronger than the sword.” Armed with just a lens and a bulletproof vest, he risked his life to show the world the unfiltered truth.

In just the past few days, six Palestinian journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa, fellow correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and freelance journalist Mohammad al-Khaldi, were killed in their tent outside a hospital in Gaza City. The UN’s human rights office condemned the attack as a “grave breach of international law” and called for safe, unhindered access for reporters. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 186 journalists have been killed since Israel’s offensive began in October 2023, making Gaza the deadliest place for journalists since CPJ began keeping records in 1992. More journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023 than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and Il, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan – combined. At least 26 of those deaths were targeted killings, murders carried out despite international law protecting reporters as civilians.

Press freedom groups say this is part of a deliberate campaign to silence reporting from Gaza, combined with Israel’s ban on foreign press entering independently. The CPJ warns Israel has a “longstanding, documented pattern” of falsely accusing Palestinian journalists of being militants to justify their killing. Sharif himself anticipated his death, writing shortly before the strike: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.”

When those voices are silenced, history shows others have found ways to carry the story forward through their phones, their social media, or simply in conversation. In an age when governments and mainstream media fail, these networks become the counterweight, redistributing power and keeping truth in circulation. Strength is in numbers, and every voice added is another step toward justice for Palestine.

As Eno himself wrote when announcing the concert on Instagram:

“Together we can raise millions in urgently needed aid for families in Gaza. Every penny donated will go to Palestinian partners through Choose Love, a UK charity supporting local humanitarians in conflict zones. But this is about more than just money. It’s about sending a message of love and solidarity to the people of Palestine – that they haven’t been forgotten. We see them, we hear them, and though we may be far away, we’re deeply connected – as we are to all humanity.”