When Black Sabbath reunited with Ozzy Osbourne in July for a final, daylong festival-style show, the list of rock star guests and performers was a mile long. One rock star and Black Sabbath fan who wasn’t there, however, was Foo Fighters lead man Dave Grohl. It was nothing personal; it’s just that Grohl had somewhere he’d rather be that day: watching the Irish bands Fontaines DC and Kneecap in London.
Kneecap, which was the supporting act at the show, is the band famous for turning concerts into pep rallies for terrorist groups and occasionally encouraging the murder of British politicians. Fontaines DC, the headliner, closed the show by projecting a message on large screens that said “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice.”
Par for the course by now, but it’s worth noting that the crowd apparently numbered about 45,000 and included other celebrities as well. So the good news is that, despite all the bellyaching, artists aren’t being censored and blacklisted and having their careers destroyed by “speaking out for Palestine.”
The bad news is that all those things appear to be happening to artists who don’t “speak out for Palestine.” A Wall Street Journal story on the effect of the Gaza war on the music industry contains this paragraph:
“On the flip side, other artists are being iced out. Israeli-Iranian singer Liraz Charhi says she lost shows for refusing to post ‘Free Palestine’ on social media. Two shows by Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist, and Israeli musician Dudu Tassa were canceled earlier this year following pressure from BDS. It cited two shows by Greenwood and Tassa in Israel in 2024 and 2025, while Tassa played for Israeli soldiers in late 2023, shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre. In Bristol, Jewish band Oi Va Voi had a concert canceled after complaints over album art featuring singer Zohara surrounded by watermelons—a fruit linked to the Palestinian flag. The group called it discrimination against her Israeli identity.”
The piece also notes that rapper Azealia Banks pulled out of two festivals after organizers allegedly pressure her to say “free Palestine.”
One cannot help but notice that all the artists being “iced out” have something in common. Unlike Kneecap and other industry drones, it’s those who don’t support Hamas who are hitting some roadblocks. As on social media or on a college campus or in the Western public square, the easy thing to do is to accuse the Jewish state of various blood crimes. It takes some backbone, apparently, to refuse to bend the knee to those who actually do what the Jews are falsely accused of doing.
The other interesting part of the Journal story was this:
“American pop band Imagine Dragons had publicly said they wanted to stay apolitical, but in June whipped out a Palestinian flag on stage at a concert in Milan after months of pressure from fans. British singer Charli XCX led chants of ‘Free Palestine’ while on stage at Primavera Sound Porto festival in Portugal this summer after she had faced an online backlash for not speaking up.”
Profiles in courage, those Imagine Dragons and Charli XCX. And no doubt many, many more. The point of the piece is that whining about Israel is the industry standard now. Want to please the suits? Include a track called “Free Palestine” on your upcoming album. It turns out that Hamas-style fascism is radio friendly.
And don’t worry, there’s a volunteer cottage industry of creepy anti-Zionists who live on the Internet and are dedicated to making sure dissenters are punished: “On social media, anonymous accounts such as Zionists in Music track pro-Israel statements, while the website Reverse Canary Mission catalogs musicians who haven’t spoken out against Israel’s actions in the Gaza war.”
Making a list and checking it twice. Healthy stuff.
Music has always been political, so what’s happening on stage isn’t breaking any new ground. What’s happening behind the scenes, however, is a bit disturbing. As is the fact that bands who consider themselves “punk rock” appear to be reading stage lines so that they don’t stand apart from the crowd. The backstage anti-Semitic pressure campaigns are bad enough; the on-stage conformism is getting a little boring.
