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A red carpet event, especially one to promote the new Downton Abbey film, is not typically a place for radical political statements. But at the film’s premiere in London earlier this month, that movie’s star, Hugh Bonneville, spoke out about Gaza. “Before I talk about the fluff and loveliness of our wonderful film, what’s about to happen in Gaza City is absolutely indefensible,” he announced to a visibly shocked showbiz reporter. “The international community must do more to bring it to an end.”
Bonneville’s words may have been surprising for some, but they’re actually part of a larger pattern of actors, musicians, artists and cultural figures who feel increasingly moved to speak out. This week hundreds of actors – including Olivia Colman, Aimee Lou Wood and Mark Ruffalo – signed a pledge promising not to work with Israeli film institutions they say are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”. From the Eurovision winner JJ using his victory to criticise Israel to footballer Mohamed Salah lambasting UEFA for announcing the death of Suleiman Obeid, the “Palestinian Pele”, without saying that he was killed in an Israeli attack, there is a sense that if people don’t use their platforms to speak out now, they may bitterly regret it later.
“So many people have been afraid of saying the wrong thing, but are now realising that silence is also a statement,” says the musician PinkPantheress, who thinks we are at a tipping point in terms of discussing Gaza. “There’s been this shift where artists see that their platforms actually matter – and that it is their responsibility to amplify the call for justice. Neutrality shouldn’t be an option.”
Next week, PinkPantheress will be performing in a manifestation of this tipping point, when a concert called Together for Palestine is held at the 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena, with all profits going to Choose Love, a British charity working in Gaza to deliver food, medical supplies and other support. It will be one of the largest-scale benefit concerts for Palestine, since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. These were followed by a campaign of bombardment and starvation by Israel that has been labelled a genocide by groups including the UN and Amnesty International.
Along with names who have spoken out about Palestine for years, such as Massive Attack and Damon Albarn, there is a broad range of cultural figures on the bill including Benedict Cumberbatch, Louis Theroux, Bastille, Paloma Faith, Riz Ahmed, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Hot Chip, Guy Pearce, Portishead, Celeste and Jamie xx. Palestinian artists and musicians, such as Faraj Suleiman, Malak Mattar and Nai Barghouti, are also represented.
The concert, which sold out in a few hours, has taken 18 months to organise. Venues were initially highly reluctant to be involved, while some musicians showed hesitation about signing up – the fact it is happening at all points not just to the increasingly urgent situation in Gaza, but the way fears about speaking out are starting to dissipate.
“You don’t want to be the only person doing this,” says Brian Eno, who is organising the concert with film producer Tracey Seaward, who was behind Dirty Pretty Things and The Queen, and actor Khalid Abdalla, who starred in United 93 and The Kite Runner. “When we first started out,” says Eno, “it was hard to get anyone interested. But I think everyone’s realised that what’s happening in Gaza is completely obscene. Whatever conflicted feelings they might have had about the war beforehand have suddenly disappeared. It’s immoral and repulsive. I think on that point, everybody can at least agree.”
Eno is keen to stress that Together for Palestine is not a political rally. Rather, it is billed as a day of hope, community and remembrance. “A lot of the people involved in making this show are Jewish, along with a lot of Palestinians as well,” says Eno. “We want it to be seen as an occasion in which people work together, regardless of their particular faith or ethnic affiliation.”
One of those Palestinians is the artist Malak Mattar, who has been working with renowned stage designer Es Devlin to curate a selection of Palestinian artworks for the show. Some of these will be by artists who have died during the conflict, such as Heba Zaqout, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in October 2023, and Duniyana Al-Amour, who was killed in her bedroom at the age of 22. The latter attack by Israel took place in August 2022, a reminder that such strikes were taking place long before the Hamas atrocities happened.
As someone who grew up in Gaza and still has family members there, it can be frustrating, says Mattar, to witness the silence of many fellow artists and institutions in the UK. “As an artist myself,” she says, “I know what it means to have things cancelled because you’ve spoken out. I have been asked not to make speeches at my exhibitions. But I think right now is a powerful moment of history, where people are coming together to speak out. It’s going to be a great sense of solidarity that we feel on the night of 17 September – and also very moving when we remember the people that we lost during the genocide.”
When the concert was first announced, Eno admitted that one of his biggest regrets, over his illustrious five-decade career in the music industry, was that “so many of us have remained silent about Palestine. Often that silence has come from fear – real fear – that speaking out could provoke a backlash, close doors or end a career.”
Yet this fear is now being discussed much more openly. Kneecap were subject to a police investigation and faced calls to have their US work visas revoked after accusing Israel of genocide onstage at the Coachella festival in April. This hasn’t prevented the likes of PinkPantheress from getting involved in the concert: “My team and I talk about the genocide in Palestine often, and what we can do to help as individuals, as a collective, but also what I can do as an artist. Putting your ego aside is important. You have to be willing to learn and get things wrong every now and again. I’m constantly listening and engaging in conversations with my team and friends. When the call came to appear at Together for Palestine, it was impossible to say no.”
Being open to learning about the reality of the situation seems crucial for the shift that is now happening. Eno happily admits that his own views on Gaza changed after visiting the West Bank six years ago. There he saw firsthand what he calls “the relentless humiliation … which is the nastiest weapon in a way … continually demeaning, continually shilly-shallying, pretending there’s a peace process when there’s no intention whatsoever to achieve peace on any kind of terms that the Palestinians could possibly accept.”
When he tried to explain this to people, Eno says, he was always being forced to go through the entire history of the conflict. People were either bamboozled by the conflicting accounts, or looking for an easy way to avoid getting involved. “Israel has always, in my opinion, depended on calling on the complexity of the situation,” says Eno. “To sort of say, ‘Well, of course you don’t really understand it, it’s far more complex than you can imagine.’ But people are no longer asking me to do this, because everyone knows we shouldn’t be in the place we are now.”
PinkPantheress says that having so many fellow artists on the bill supporting the message has made it easier to speak out – and hopefully will make it easier for others to join them in future. “One voice can get ignored,” she says, “but when it’s a chorus it’s way harder. Seeing artists from totally different backgrounds come together proves this isn’t just a political issue but a human one.”
